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Originally published by CNN
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On a frigid afternoon along Chicago’s lakefront last month, a surreal vision unfolded: towering mammoths with gleaming tusks swayed against the skyline. Their skeletal frames, constructed from metal and textured hair, revealed bundled performers beneath them, moving in a slow, synchronized procession.
The creatures are the latest creation of Chicago-based artist Nick Cave, whose ambitious new exhibition, “Mammoth,”opens February 13 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). The show marks the museum’s largest single-artist commission to date and Cave’s first solo exhibition in the nation’s capital.
Best known for his iconic “Soundsuits”, elaborate wearable sculptures that conceal the body beneath layers of found materials, Cave now turns his attention to the ancient mammoth as symbol and spectacle. The exhibition includes sculptural installations, mammoth skulls perched atop towering wooden structures, and video footage of the creatures roaming Chicago’s waterfront. Later this year, performers will guide 12 mammoths in a procession through the museum.
Excavating Memory and Meaning
Cave describes himself in this project as both artist and archaeologist. Thousands of objects — many drawn from family heirlooms, flea markets, and antique stores — are cataloged and transformed into sculptural arrangements, architectural forms, and illuminated displays at the center of the exhibition.
From bingo cages and bicycle parts fashioned into sky-reaching antennae to a sprawling beaded tapestry titled “Palimpsest (Promised Land)”, inspired by his grandparents’ farmland in Missouri, Cave explores lineage, migration, and the inheritance of craft traditions.
“It led me to ask: How was I made?” Cave reflected in interviews. Born in 1959 in Fulton, Missouri, he grew up surrounded by makers — woodworkers, seamstresses, carpenters, musicians. That legacy pulses through the exhibition’s layered surfaces of beads, textiles, and repurposed artifacts.
SAAM curator Sarah Newman emphasized that the exhibition remains faithful to Cave’s original vision, even amid political scrutiny directed at Smithsonian institutions during President Donald Trump’s second term. A 2025 executive order called for reviewing exhibitions for “improper ideology,” though museum officials maintain that “Mammoth” has not been altered.
The Mammoth as Metaphor
For Cave, the mammoth carries potent symbolism.
“I’m witnessing a time where history is being erased, but at the same time revealed,” he said. “Mammoths once existed, then were buried and forgotten, and rediscovered. What is erased can reappear.”
That duality, disappearance, and rediscovery resonates throughout the exhibition. Looming mammoth skulls evoke watchfulness, while communal procession underscores unity and collective movement.
Unlike his Soundsuits, which conceal identity, the mammoths deliberately reveal the performers operating within them. Cave abandoned earlier plans to cloak the sculptures fully in hide-like coverings, preferring that audiences see the humanity inside.
“We weren’t hiding,” he said. “Humanity was revealed.”
Art, Protection, and Rebirth
Cave’s artistic trajectory has long been shaped by questions of race, vulnerability, and resilience. His first Soundsuit emerged in 1991, following the Rodney King beating, serving as both armor and an amplifier, disguising the wearer’s identity while producing sound with every movement.
Across decades, Cave has confronted slavery’s iconography, police violence, and the fragmentation of Black bodies through sculpture and installation. A new bronze work in “Mammoth,” titled “Amalgam (Plot),” depicts two Black figures lying on the floor, from which sculptural flora erupt. Though somber, Cave frames the piece as one of rebirth.
“He transforms agonizing realities into something that can feel joyous,” said Naomi Beckwith, deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum, which hosted Cave’s 2022 retrospective “Forothermore.”
An Invitation to Reflect
“Mammoth” has been nearly a decade in development. Cave assembled the components in his Chicago studio, which he shares with his longtime partner, artist and designer Bob Faust, but finalized the exhibition on-site in Washington over two weeks.
The result is immersive and open-ended. While exhibition texts touch lightly on themes of race, colonialism, and climate change, the museum encourages visitors to bring their own interpretations.
Cave hopes viewers will linger with a pie plate, a thimble, and a beaded panel, and connect memory to meaning.
“I know everyone will land somewhere in the exhibition,” he said. “It will bring us back to something we once remembered, and bring us fully into the present.”
In an era marked by cultural debates over which histories are preserved or erased, “Mammoth” stands as both a monument and a meditation, a reminder that what is buried can rise again.
By The Midtown Times Staff
