"When I look outside, when I go to the front door. That is my new canvas. Today. It's not really what happens in the studio. It's what happens outside of the studio."


Visual Artist Nick Cave joins Helga Davis to talk about the evolution of his sculptural work, his community collaborations, and how to move from Black sorrow to Black excellence. 
Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, MO; lives and works in Chicago, IL) is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. 
Cave is well known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, initially created in direct response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991.
Soundsuits camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment. They serve as a visual embodiment of social justice that represent both brutality and empowerment. 
The Let Go, Cave’s Park Avenue Armory Commission, premiered in June 2018.

Nick Cave

Artist, performer, and host Helga Davis brings a soulful curiosity and love of people to the podcast Helga, where she talks about the intimate lives of creative people as they share the steps they’ve taken along their path. She draws listeners into these discussions with cultural change-makers, whether already famous or rising talents, whose sensibilities expand our imaginations as we explore what we think we know about each other. The new season of Helga is a co-production of WNYC Studios and the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including Radiolab, On the Media, and Death, Sex & Money. The Brown Arts Institute at Brown University is a new university-wide research enterprise and catalyst for the arts at Brown that creates new work and supports, amplifies, and adds new dimensions to the creative practices of Brown’s arts departments, faculty, students, and community.

Personal Journals

Society & Culture

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

Noliwe Rooks, author, education advocate, and Chair of Africana Studies at Brown University, shares her family’s experiences with education inequality and how community can foster success at school.

Noliwe Rooks on Extending the Ethic of Care

British singer-songwriter and producer Sampha talks about fatherhood, the images that inspired his album “Lahai,”and how he follows his intuition in art and life.

Singer-songwriter Sampha on Fatherhood and Intuition

The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks talks storytelling, family, and creating a one-act play for each day of the year.

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks on Self-Worth and Loving the Grind

Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo is a music professor who also performs as the rapper and producer Sammus. Here, she talks about navigating childhood anxiety and showing up as a socially conscious artist.

Scholar Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo on the Joys of Nerd Rap

Tremaine Emory, streetwear fashion designer, discusses self-validation in consumer culture, and what it means to try to reshape the world.

Nick Cave

Download our free app to listen on your phone