Tag: Performance Art

Bryan Zanisnik – Emily GD – Drawing 2

Bryan Zanisnik was born in 1979 in Union, New Jersey. Today, he lives travelling between New York and Stockholm, Sweden. His art discusses autobiographical and social subject matter through the use of videos, performances, installations, and photographs. His pieces include whimsical but strange and sometimes dreary elements as he explores the dynamic between performer and audience. I was drawn to this artist because he creates work that I normally don’t, and lately I’ve enjoyed learning more about conceptual and performance art. My favorite piece that he created was the Meadowlands Picaresque, which was a site-specific installation that was inspired by the Meadowlands swamps near his birthplace of Northern New Jersey. In this piece, he was interested in finding the ‘blank spots on the map’ and exploring them to discover what forgotten things they might hold. He wanted the viewers of this installation to be able to play and explore as if they were experiencing what he did when he got the inspiration for the piece.

 “And maybe that’s also what really drew me: That it’s so much of the same thing again and again and again. It’s kind of monumental in its nothingness.”


– Bryan Zanisnik

In the 1900’s Zanisnik’s great grandfather supposedly wrestled a wolf in Ukraine. In 2007 he himself traveled to Ukraine and researched this story about his family and found out it was true. His piece titled, He is Not a Man is a live performance inspired by these events. Zanisnik invited a childhood bully to dress as the wolf and box him. The boxing match was real and Zanisnik lost in three rounds.

“I kind of think of building one of my installations as if I’m constructing a stream of consciousness sentence. That not every word leads into the next, but there’s an overall mood or feeling being constructed.”

-Bryan Zanisnik

In 2012 Zanisnik got a cease & desist letter from the author Philip Roth’s legal counsel for holding one of his novels during a performance piece. The utter ridiculousness of this legal battle inspired Zanisnik to create the Philip Roth Presidential Library, a series of giant sculptures made of drywall and wood that each held hundreds of Philip Roth novels inside. The installation both showcases Roth’s genius while also criticizing him and his big ego.

Nick Cave- Jaylyn Cawood

Nick Cave is a performance artist born in 1959 in Fulton, Missouri, who express himself through mediums he has created. In a world of racial and gender discrimination, this visionary has found a unique way to empower individuals using Soundsuits: wearable sculptures made from an array of materials, including, sequins, dyed hair, fabric, beads, sisal, twigs and feathers. Soundsuits are dubbed as such from the unique sounds the shell makes when the wearer moves.


Looking at these fascinating creations forces the viewers out of their heads so that they have no choice but to look at them with a perspective free of judgement. Nick Cave’s inspiration comes from not only from a dark place of his own experiences, but the desire to camouflage the body, giving the wearers of the Soundsuits a new identity free of race, gender, or class discrimination.

The first Soundsuit that Nick Cave ever created was in response to the Rodney King beatings in 1992. He wanted to understand what it was like to be discarded, and started collecting twigs around the park that could convey that emotion. He took them all to to his studio, and what resulted was what he describes as his “sculpture performative work.”
The soundsuits are all built around a single object, or the instigator, on which he expands until they take on their completed form. Many of the materials are objects he finds at flea markets and antique malls. He explains that he is often building in the moment when he is shopping, and simply finding one object can tie into an entire project that he hasn’t even started yet. Because these objects are often nostalgic, they create an atmosphere of familiarity for the public.

However, the Soundsuits aren’t just sculptural work; they are also performance art. Cave regularly employs the help of dancers and choreographers to integrate the Soundsuits into community celebrations or festivals. This not only gets people to better appreciate the arts but engage in them as well. As the creator, he himself commonly takes part in wearing the sculptures and performing in them, opening up their full potential as living art and costume.
Cave strives not only in creating a dream-like state for his audience, but to make his art a form of diplomacy that addresses issues in our current society, such as the police brutality against unarmed black men.

I think one of the most unique things about Nick Caves work is that’s free from definition. He doesn’t need to draw any of his works beforehand or have a full picture in mind. He’s constantly in a state of experimentation, and merely improvises and lives in the moment through what feels right. Despite having a network of ten full-time assistants to help him with the Soundsuits, he will always do the first project by himself. Cave describes his work as meditative, which is beautiful in correlation with the end result. When you see the Soundsuits, you can tell their is a deep bevy of meaning and thought behind them.