Spirit in art

The idea of bringing together the work of conceptual artist Nick Cave and photographer Phyllis Galembo is just the sort of inspirational brilliance one comes to expect from Halsey Institute director and out-of-the-box thinker Mark Sloan.

Cave has been making "soundsuits" for about 15 years -- garments made of a variety of materials and odd objects that rustle and click and hiss when set in motion. They are informed by West African ritual costumes but include references to Cave's personal life and to aspects of American culture and history. They are stunning and spooky, strange and delightful, sacred and sacreligious at the same time.

Photo Gallery

Call and Response

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston is showing the work of dancer-turned-artist Nick Cave and photographer Phyllis Galembo in a show titled "Call and Response." Galembo' is interested in ritual masquerade. Cave's "soundsuits" are derived from African traditions, but incorporate aspects of American culture.

Galembo has been traveling to Western Africa (and Brazil, Haiti and other places) for years to photograph the real thing: ritual costumes worn by villagers during religious festivals and ceremonies. Somehow, showing genuine interest in their cultures and customs, she persuades these masqueraders to pose for her. The result is a large-format (30 by 30 inches or bigger), color-saturated, detail-rich portrait that pays tribute to ancient traditions.

Sloan, then, makes the link visceral.

The show, titled "Call and Response: Africa to America," is presented in partnership with Spoleto Festival USA, and it explores what Sloan describes as "the cultural collision of Africans in America." In sum, it's about the way indigenous religions are expressed, suppressed and transformed.

Sloan points out that the subject matter is particularly relevant in Charleston, where perhaps 60 percent of enslaved Africans entered the country and where ancient traditions clashed with European Christianity.

So when the viewer is confronted by Galembo's portrait of a young, dark-skinned Nigerian boy covered in pitch-black petroleum, the implications and associations are at once thrilling and shocking: a black boy in black face ... the use of modern market commodities in ritual ceremonies ... a sneaky reference to the U.S.-based oil companies drilling for petroleum in the Nigerian basin ... the innocence of tribal life confronting the camera and, by extension, the wider world beyond.

"(The pictures) ask more questions than they answer," Galembo says.

Or there is Cave's surreal soundsuit made of thousands of discarded twigs, with an inverted straw stool for a face. It was his first attempt at this new form, and it was inspired by the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police, he says.

Cave was strolling in a park in Chicago, where he lives, thinking about the humiliation King endured, the prejudice and abuse, as if he were worth nothing, a discarded man. Looking down, Cave noticed all the small sticks and twigs that had fallen from the trees, shaken loose, no longer necessary.

Then Cave, who was a dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater 1978-84 and who has worked with textiles as a fashion designer, thought to collect the sticks and make a sculpture from them.

It was an object that represented a suit, he says, but he did not at first consider wearing it. "Then I realized it was a garment, so I tried it on."

Suddenly, a static piece of sculpture came alive. Cave's background in dance and fine art, his interest in politics and culture, his taste for celebration and extravagance all converged in this new work. It was one of those pivotal moments when an artist realizes his life has changed forever, he says.

Another of the soundsuits is so graphical it is cartoonlike, Cave says. Stiched together like a collage or assemblage, it shines with vibrant colors and textures. The shape is "high priest," resembling a bishop's robe and miter, or a perversely celebratory version of a Ku Klux Klan cloak.

These suits are authoritative and force the viewer to shift poise and attitude with each encounter, the artist says.

Fourteen are mounted on mannequins in the larger of the Halsey's two galleries, but you can see and hear the effects of the suits in motion by visiting the small video room behind the gallery's library. Cave himself brings them alive with a dancer's impeccable agility and grace.

As one meanders through the room enjoying Cave's imagination and the ideas evoked by his work, the visitor has a clear sense of the roots of this art on display in the adjacent gallery.

Galembo, a professor of photography at the State University of New York in Albany, is interested in exploring a related kind of transformative experience. She travels extensively, timing her trips to coincide with religious ceremonies in Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso and other places.

Whereas Cave is causing the viewer to contemplate the trickery of American culture, its prohibitions and prejudices, its hip-hop and holiday masquerades, Galembo is intrigued by ritual masquerade which, through the use of masks and ceremonial dress, enables tribesmen to invoke the supernatural and connect to their ancestral past.

By photographing individuals who pose for a portrait, she implies the ceremony without showing it, focusing instead on the spirit at the center of the ritual.

"People are proud of what they have, people want to be recognized," Galembo said of her subjects. Though she must be careful to show respect and stay out of the way if ceremonies get a little wild.

Both artists rely on flea markets. Cave and his assistants collect fabrics, doilies, sequins and other materials with which a soundsuit is made. Galembo finds costumes.

After years of accumulation, she made a book about the American version of masquerade: Halloween. She also has photographed Brazilian carnival and Haitian vodou practitioners. Most recently, her focus has been WestAfrican masquerade. For her, the costumes draw attention to an existing religious and cultural tradition and highlight a sense of community.

Cave, too, is highlighting community, but he is concerned less with documentation and more with invention. For him, the soundsuit is an expressive update of the masquerade costume, one that reimagines the function and context of utilitarian objects and imbues them with a uniquely American sensibility. Sometimes, he gets members of a dance troupe to don the suits and parade through the streets, as if they were Maurice Sendak's Wild Things set loose in Chicago.

Both artists challenge the viewer to consider the motivations behind masquerade and the threats posed by unsympathetic forces.

Galembo said she has witnessed many anti-tradition campaigns waged in Africa by Christian missionaries and their converts that disparage and threaten indigenous religions. Her work records aspects of these at-risk cultures and affirms the perennial religious practices that pre-date monotheism.

Cave is exploring the use of a new kind of masquerade in America, but one that has deep roots in Africa. His art, too, affirms a culture that has experienced great tragedy and strain, yet nevertheless has found reasons to celebrate.

In the end, "Call and Response" has at its core something of the indomitable spirit of humanity, a joy that cannot be suppressed, no matter the complicated circumstances that threaten to engulf it.

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.