Soundsuit (2010)
Nick Cave (b.1959)
Soundsuit, 2010
Mixed media
Dimensions not listed
Norton Museum of Art
I am standing in the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, looking up at what appears to be a Christmas-themed vacuum nozzle stuck on top of an early-70s era Elvis jumpsuit. The figure is silly and surreal and incredibly alien. I don’t know if I should giggle or scream. It’s positioned as if it’s about to lean down close to me and I worry that it’s wiry bristles might start to spin, a sure indication that I’m about to be hoovered up and eaten. Inside my head I’m screaming and pleading “No wait… I’ve paid!”
If I ran any of the museums that have a Nick Cave soundsuit I’d make sure that at least once a week, or possibly even daily, someone from the staff would be required to don the suit and wander round the rooms entertaining and/or scaring the crap out of the guests. For practical reasons, the suits are generally displayed as static sculptures but I mean, come on. They’re SUITS! The whole purpose of these costumes is that they were made to be worn. And just look at them. They shimmer! They shimmy! They make noises when they move thanks to the way the materials have been attached to the suit and each other. But these are not monster masks and they aren’t meant to be scary. In fact, they were designed as a form of protection.
The artist, Nick Cave, was born in 1959 in Fulton, Missouri in the Deep South of the USA. He trained as a dancer, and his artistic practice includes sculpture and performance art. It’s easy to see how those three things combine in his soundsuits but their origination came about from an unlikely trigger. Cave has stated that the origin of the soundsuits was an almost subconscious, impulsive reaction to the beating of Rodney King, a black man that was a victim of police brutality in Los Angeles is 1991. The incident sparked riots and is still viewed as a tragic moment that defined the racial divide in twentieth-century America. Cave’s reaction was to create something that hides the identity, gender, class and race of the wearer — an understandably natural desire for a black man at that time in America — but the noises that his first suit made were an unintended surprise. Hence the name.
Aside from being a wearable suit, knowing that a key component of their existence is sound… banging, clanging, rustling, whatever… just makes me want to see them in action. Thankfully there are plenty of YouTube videos floating about, but given how prolific Cave is as an artist there’s a good chance that one day I may get to see a performance in person. Many sources online indicate that Cave has made over 500 different variations, but for some reason the only ones I keep bumping into are clearly from the same button-covered series as the one in the Norton.
When I did research for this article, however, I was amazed to see the wild range of forms these suits take on. Twigs, bottle caps, pony beads, buttons, flowers, coloured straw and hay, etc are all elements that are used in various flamboyant ways. They are visually outlandish, but it’s even more fun to listen to the videos of these suits to hear how the different materials create sounds during movement. Seeing them in action makes me wonder what they are like inside for the occupant. Some appear to be so tall and top heavy that I wonder how the wearer manages to stay upright? Most suits are variations of a biped, but a few four-legged versions exist.
The idea of hiding inside a costume is not new. Cave’s twist, however, is that he is not attempting to replace the identify of the wearer with a new one, but to obscure all identify completely. The resultant forms might appear to be hybrid creatures or alien beings, but what’s important isn’t how they look but how they sound. That’s one reason why I think they should be donned more often in the venues where they appear. Cave wants us to look past identity, gender, class and race and all the things to which we most frequently react with stereotype. He just wants us to listen.
That’s why I like it.
"One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art." - Oscar Wilde
Previously, on Why I Like It:
Jul — Anhelos (2016), Andrea Ringeling
Jun — King Charles III (2024), Jonathan Yeo
May — Penguin Pool (1934), Berthold Lubetkin