A chat with visual artist and sculptor, Nick Cave

For the past 30 years, the visual artist/sculptor/dancer/educator Nick Cave has been making art that speaks to racism, gun violence, inequality and injustice. It was in 1991 as the brutal beating of Rodney King by the LA Police reverberated around the world, that Nick Cave created a wearable artwork that would go on to change his life: it was the first of his now 500-plus Soundsuits, a body-camouflaging second skin that conceals race, gender, class; a wearable, kinetic, sound-producing, protective carapace that both demands to be seen, and also forces the viewer to look without judgement. Today he has works in public collections in 30 states, plus museums around the world from Sydney to Stockholm, and through October 2nd the first career-spanning survey of his work, entitled ‘Forothermore’ is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. And this week Diana Moxon spent the full hour of the show chatting with him about his work, growing up in Fulton and Columbia MO, and about being an artist with a civic responsibility.