CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/9/2022

Antwaun Sargent on Nick Cave in 'Forothermore’

Featured spreads are from Nick Cave: Forothermore, the superb catalog to the critically-acclaimed mid-career survey on view now through October 2, 2022, at the MCA Chicago. “In Cave’s art, material realities simultaneously encompass journeys of Black oppression and excellence,” Antwaun Sargent writes. “His reconstitution of found materials that are often uncommon in contemporary fashion design—but which are found in histories of costume and craft—is an experiment in exceeding traditions as a way of extending the possibilities of identity. It’s a re-stylization of the conditions of the present into an aesthetic politic that provides a space of hope for the Black body. It is a constructed space where the Black body can transcend the violence prescribed to Black identity with glamour, authority and noise. Cave’s is a language that is built on the past, operates from the present, but thrusts the imagination far into the future.”