Becoming (Un)Masked
Semiotics of Identification in Nick Cave’s Hy-Dyve
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21974656 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cristina Albu (University of Missouri), Cristina-Crenguţa Albu (0000-0001-9783-149X, University of Missouri–Kansas City, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 53 |
| Publication date | 2023-03-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Arts (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0752 • E-ISSN: 2076-0752 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/arts12020053 |
| OpenAlex | W4324056012 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
Displayed in a Kansas City neighborhood with a history of blockbusting, Nick Cave’s 14-channel video installation Hy-Dyve confronted viewers with a visceral sense of entrapment in traumatizing spaces of racism. The immersive environment portrayed deeply moving experiences of confinement and concealment, connecting narratives of the Middle Passage to present fears of racial profiling. Shown at different scales on the dilapidated walls of a deconsecrated church, the video images enabled visitors to sense what it feels like to be exposed to a scrutinizing and categorizing gaze. Building on Gilles Deleuze’s theory of close-up operations, I explore how Cave both showcases and subverts the visual rhetoric of surveillance, inviting viewers to suspend processes of individuation and embrace alterity. I offer a semiotic analysis of the visual motifs in Hy-Dyve and show how their unstable meanings heighten the potential for immersion in conjunction with the projection mapping technique. The entanglement of video images with crumbling architectural features destabilizes perception and fosters reflection on the imbrication of past and present realities of racial discrimination. Placing Hy-Dyve in the broader context of Cave’s body of work, I suggest that it conjoins two different sides of his practice: a post-black approach to issues of identity which is consonant with his Soundsuits and a more radical activist stance which addresses the particularities of black experience and the burdening history of racial abuse
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Movie theater · Narrative · Racism · Rhetoric · Semiotics · Sociology · Visual arts · Gender Studies · History · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |