Mural by Nick Cave and Bob Faust to be Unveiled This Weekend as Part of ARCHIVE OF DESIRE

The Onassis Foundation festival "Archive of Desire": A Festival Inspired by the Poet C. P. Cavafy kicks off this weekend, the final weekend of Poetry Month. Curated by Composer Paola Prestini, it features performances, visual arts initiatives, commissions, short films, lectures, and conversations exploring and expanding on the poet's work and archives. A highlight of the programming is Lit, 2023, a new mural commissioned by the foundation installed on the exterior wall of National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The unveiling of Lit, 2023, a new mural by Nick Cave and Bob Faust will take place on Saturday, April 29, 2023, 5:30pm at National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn, NY.

"Later, in a more perfect society, someone else made just like me is certain to appear and act freely." This excerpt from the C. P. Cavafy poem "Hidden Things" serves as the landscape for Lit, 2023. The quote resonated with Cave & Faust as a visceral connection to human insecurities, and the potential for human progress and communal empowerment. A billboard-scale expression of radical joy intended to refuel us on our way toward that more perfect society, the mural will make use of the cumulative powers of its visual components: Cavafy's prescient words, an image of a Nick Cave soundsuit, and the facade of National Sawdust itself.

Cave originally developed his now famous soundsuits to create a camouflage for the wearer's shape, constructing a second skin that hides gender, race, and class, and compelling the audience to observe without judgment, operating less as an armor and more as a key to unlock one's own full expression. Faust worked with Cave to select an image of a soundsuit from 2003 for use in this large scale public artwork to integrate as an anthropomorphic representation of how an individual body may be bound to a certain time and place, but that with perseverance and hard work, will eventually be released from the walls which contain it.

More Information About the Festival:

https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/cavafy-festival

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