Until; Nick Cave at MASS MoCA

   ​Nick Cave’s exhibition at MASS MoCA is utterly overwhelming in its scope and depth, richly layered in meaning and metaphor as well as visually hypnotizing. My first experience of the show was in October 2016 and I was perhaps even more struck when I went back in January for a fitting teacher workshop on Art and Social Change. Months have passed and I’m still processing my thoughts on Until, on display through August 2017. One could analyze the show over pages and pages, but I’ll do my best to be brief – you’ll need to see the rest for yourself. 

​   Until opens with an immersive forest of metallic lawn spinners. While mesmerized by all of the fluttering ornaments, more sinister symbols – guns, bullets, teardrops – plainly show amid the shining suns, circles, and flowers. The guns spin madly – they point everywhere yet nowhere. An ominous whirring sound of fans across the building adds a thick layer of anxiety. A pair of girls takes a selfie – are they so spellbound by the shining and spinning that they don’t consider the guns? 

Cave packages a weighty significance in a light and seductive material.
​   ​In the middle of this is an ivory stag figurine, almost hidden and easy to miss. At first I hadn’t given it much thought, but when a friend asked why it was there the metaphor became clear: an animal often hunted (now surrounded by guns), its nearly white color a hint at symbolic innocence, covered in glistening beads and sharing a visual decadence with the rest of the exhibition.

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