Nick Cave

Soundsuit (2009), Smithsonian American Art Museum

Soundsuit (2010), Renwick Gallery

Soundsuits are sculptural costumes enveloping the wearer's body in materials including but not limited to dyed human hair, sisal, plastic buttons, beads, wire, sequins, and feathers. Soundsuits camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender, and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment. In using everyday objects, Cave can create an atmosphere of familiarity while rearranging the objects into interpretive representations of both social and material culture. As race, identity, and gender are generally accepted to form the axis of his work, Cave's soundsuits can telegraph many concepts simultaneously. Their meaning can therefore change based on their environment, movement, fixed state, and/or the inclusion of group choreography. The finished pieces bear some resemblance to African ceremonial costumes and masks. The suits also reference carnival costumes, Dogon costumes, Rococo, and ball culture.

Cave's first soundsuit was created in 1992, as a reaction to the beating of Rodney King. Cave collected a large number of sticks and twigs from the ground and fashioned them into a suit that, to his surprise, made sounds when worn. His suits are most often presented for public viewing as static sculptures, but they are also observed through live performance, video, and photography. Bringing his interactive creations to life, "Cave regularly performs in the sculptures himself, dancing either before the public or for the camera, activating their full potential as costume, musical instrument, and living icon." He has produced more than 500 soundsuits, since the creation of his first in 1992. He is very much inspired by dance and choreography, which works well with soundsuits because they allow the expression of both arts in one piece. He talks about how he wants his work to be seen without the artist in mind. With the Soundsuits series, the viewer doesn't know the identity, gender, or race of the wearer.

In 2021, Cave was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York to create a permanent installation inspired by his soundsuits spanning the Times Square-42nd Street and 42nd Street-Bryant Park subway stations. The work, Each One, Every One, Equal All (2021), consists of a series of mosaic tile murals of imagined and real soundsuits and mobiles created by Cave, along with video installations of the soundsuits in motion. Writing about the installation in The New York Times before its completion in 2022, critic John Vincler described the figures in the work as "joyous" and said the piece "feels like a necessary correction, right at home amid the noise and teem" of the subway.

One of these Soundsuits was chosen by Peter Gabriel to represent his song "Live and Let Live", the final single on his eighth album i/o, released in 2023.

In 2013, Cave worked with the dancers of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, in which he was formerly a dancer, and created HEARD•NY. This performance took place in one of the city's most bustling thoroughfares, Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall. HEARD•NY was not a purely visual spectacle, but a layered commentary on ceremony (particularly, costumed West African ritual), identity, and the place of dreams in civic life.

A herd of 30 colorful life-size horses broke into choreographed movement—or “crossings”— twice a day for just a week and was accompanied by live music. Each suit, made of brightly-colored synthetic raffia, was operated by two dancers from the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. The project was presented by Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit as part of a series of events celebrating the centennial of Grand Central. Cave's soundsuits were created to be seen in motion.

Choreographed performances such as these show the audience what the soundsuits look and sound like in their true form. Soundsuit sculpture is part of the Colección SOLO museum and is shown as part of its permanent exhibition and was part of different temporary exhibitions, such as Certeza (2023), at its museum in Madrid.

Cave's works outside of his soundsuits are predominantly mixed-media sculptures and large-scale installations that use found objects and brightly colored fabrics. He creates sculptural art that discusses current racial tensions, especially gun violence and its impact on Black men. One such piece is TM 13, a sculpture that responds to the life and 2012 death of Trayvon Martin. After George Zimmerman was acquitted of Martin's murder on July 13, 2013 (hence the title "TM 13"), Cave created a powerful sculpture centering on a hoodie, denim pants, a Black mannequin, and sneakers. The sculpture is conspicuously covered in a net, "creat[ing] a kind of Soundsuit for the ghost of Trayvon Martin. A way for a dead black teenager to make an outcry and an uproar, to protest against his undeserved demise".

Cave's mixed-media sculptures often include black doll or mannequin parts (heads, hands, etc.) placed at the center or top of a piece, creating an altar-like semblance. By focusing his pieces in this manner, viewers of his art can "examine the history of trauma and racism, ... the objectification of the black male". His 2014 exhibition Rescue "inspects the idea of servitude and the accompanying stigma within the Black community". Most of these works are not audible, like his 2016–2017 exhibition Until at MASS MoCa, as Cave wants the exhibition participants "to be included – and implicated – in the work" as opposed to focusing on sound and movement. The act of viewing his works with participants seeing one another at the same time is a metaconcept Cave promotes.

Cave has taught extensively at universities across the United States. He began working at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989 as a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies and was later appointed to the Department of Fashion. As of 2018, he served as the graduate director of the fashion program and chair of the department. He has served as a visiting instructor and artist at a number of other institutions, among them Beloit College, Fabric Workshop & Museum, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Pilchuck Glass School, University of Arizona, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.