Nick Cave at the 2026 Biennale. Seven works of loss, memory, and protest

Two Points in Time at Once

The American artist presents in Venice an installation composed of seven works, six in bronze and one wall assemblage, conceived as a single body. It is a work that moves through the pain of loss without closing in on trauma, opening instead onto the possibility of a shared presence.

Link to the Italian version on Artribune

There are artists who bring a work to the Biennale. And there are artists who bring a shift. Nick Cave, in Venice, seems to arrive in precisely this second way. His presence in In Minor Keys matters not only because of the weight of his name or the central place his practice has occupied over the past several decades. It matters above all because Two Points in Time at Once, the project he is presenting at the 2026 Venice Biennale, marks a specific moment in his trajectory: not a rupture, but a shift in material, scale, and intensity.

Those who know Cave primarily through his celebrated Soundsuits will find the ethical core of his practice here as well. This time, however, that core takes shape in bronze. Gone is the vibrating fabric, the movement that activates form, the skin of the work coming alive through performance. In its place is a presence that feels heavier, steadier, more exposed, yet no less alive. The works in Two Points in Time at Once emerge from this tension: holding the memory of the body, of vulnerability, and of trauma, and giving it a public form capable of occupying space without losing its fragility.

The Biennale works

The installation unfolds across seven different locations, like a fragmented presence moving through Venice. At its center is the Amalgam series, made up of Amalgam (Seated), Amalgam (Origin), Amalgam (Plot), Amalgam (Resuscitation), and Amalgam (Meditation), alongside Grapht and Siren. In some of these works, that tension comes through with particular force: in Amalgam (Seated), the figure seems to bear the weight of an entire world gathered onto the body; in Amalgam (Origin), the form stretches upward, almost into a ritual verticality; in Amalgam (Plot), the work becomes more withdrawn and unsettling, as if loss and memory were settling into matter. Grapht, with its language of assemblage and layering, opens onto a different register, more fragmented and more inward. The work as a whole does not describe pain. It makes space for it.

This is where the move into bronze becomes decisive. It is not simply a technical variation, nor an isolated episode within an already established practice. It is the way Cave puts pressure back on some of the questions that have shaped his work for years: how the body is protected, how a wound can be exposed without turning it into spectacle, how a presence can be built that is at once vulnerable and political. In this sense, Venice is not merely an international showcase, but the place where this new threshold in his work comes most clearly into view.

The interview

Soundsuits have become one of the most recognizable strands of your practice. At the Biennale, however, you are presenting something that works in a different material and at a different scale. Where does this shift come from?

It comes from where I am today. At this moment I am working in bronze, so it made sense to me that this very platform would become the place to present a new body of work. I feel them as an extension of the Soundsuits, but in another material language.

The title is Two Points in Time at Once. How should this project be understood?

I consider it a single installation articulated in seven stations, like one body opening into space through different yet deeply connected moments. Each station recalls one of the seven stages of grief over loss, but not in an illustrative way. I am interested in loss as a human and collective experience, as something that touches the body, memory, and the perception of time.

The work speaks about loss, but also about what loss produces: vulnerability, resilience, memory, the possibility of transformation. It concerns our connections, but also our divisions. It is rooted in protest and in an awareness of trauma, but it also wants to open a space for reflection, listening, and solidarity.

So the core of the work is not only formal.

No, it never is. Even when the work may appear festive, ritualistic, almost celebratory, for me it always remains a way of confronting the world. The Soundsuits were born after the beating of Rodney King, and they carry that political root with them. From the beginning, there was a relationship to violence and to the way the Black body is looked at, exposed, threatened. That is why I continue to think of my work as a form of consciousness.

In what way do these bronzes still carry that tension?

I continue to question protection. How the spirit is protected. How existence is sheltered without giving up presence. That energy is in these bronzes too. The material changes, but that underlying question does not.

What has bronze given you that fabric could not?

Bronze demands a different sense of time and a different kind of listening. It does not have the mobility of fabric, nor its direct relationship to performance. One has to understand its weight, its sensitivity, the way it holds meaning. But that is precisely why it interested me. It will be different, yes, but it will remain recognizable.

How much does it matter that this shift is happening precisely at the Venice Biennale?

It matters a great deal. The Biennale is an international platform, and it forces one to think very clearly about how the work presents itself to the world. In that sense, it is a critical threshold. And it involves risk. But risk is part of my work.

This Biennale also carries the powerful presence of Koyo Kouoh. What did her invitation mean to you?

A great deal. When Koyo Kouoh came to my studio, what struck me immediately was the quality of her gaze, but also the way she carried herself in that encounter. There was listening, attention, lightness. We talked, we laughed, and it was a moment I carry with me very fondly. When she told me she wanted to invite me to the Biennale, I was deeply moved.

Thinking back on that meeting, knowing it had taken place shortly before her passing, made it even more moving. After her death, I thought above all about the enormous loss the art world had suffered. For that reason, I found it very important that the Biennale chose to carry forward her vision and her selection. To be part of this exhibition, for me, means entering with gratitude and responsibility into a project that still carries her sensitivity and her thinking.

If you had to leave three words as a way into this work, which would you choose?

Community. Human dimension. Belief.

More than a new chapter, Two Points in Time at Once is the point at which some of the central questions in Nick Cave’s work return with greater weight: the body, the wound, memory, protest.

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