Meet Nick Cave and Naomi Beckwith as they discuss the artist’s practice and the themes of the exhibition.
Transcript
Naomi Beckwith: Welcome to "Forothermore," a 30-year survey of the work of the amazing artist Nick Cave. My name is Naomi Beckwith. I am the Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.
Nick Cave: And I am Nick Cave, artist.
This show illustrates what I’ve been doing with my life, and what I’ve been doing is really using art as this vehicle to heal, to forgive, and to work through the daily trauma of the abuse, the assault on Black bodies.
Naomi Beckwith: Throughout this exhibition, you will see works that speak to violence, that speak to injustice, that speak to traumas that many people have faced: poor people, Black people, queer people, especially. But you will also see a vibrant and dazzling insistence that those conditions don’t necessarily have to be the conditions in which we operate.
Nick Cave: Beauty, adornment, embellishment has always been my pushback. I have always used it as a way to resist. It brings the power to the dark side of the work. It shrines. But it stands with hope and optimism. It’s that all that we have? That’s the one thing that can never be taken away from any of us, is this idea of dreaming, and thinking of the fantastic.
And I really realized that this moment, as well as all the moments that I’ve had around the practice, has always been for others. For me, when I think about Forothermore, it’s so much grander, it’s so much bigger than myself. It’s a way in for all of us to collectively come together in a shared experience. It’s therapy.
