Joy++

Augment by internationally-acclaimed artist Nick Cave is a singular artwork, an exuberant social experience, and a call for Boston to come together in public and cultivate joy across the city. Created as an open question “what brings you joy?” this multi-faceted project asks us to reflect on the power of the individual versus the collective and on the difference between happiness and joy as a means to confront a time fraught with division.

The community-created building wrap remains on view at 555 Columbia Rd. in Dorchester’s Upham’s Corner neighborhood. Read more about the installation.

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The Installation

transforming a building, reflecting the vibrancy of Upham's

On display through October 20, 2020, the installation spills out of the windows at 555 Columbia Avenue and is accompanied by a custom-designed building wrap comprised of collages made by members of the Upham’s Corner community during public workshops facilitated by local artists and our partners at DS4SI between April and July 2019. Visible to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Augment is a beacon of happiness, creativity, and togetherness built hand-in-hand with the neighborhood.

On October 20, 2020, Cave’s inflatables found new life at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. The building wrap at 555 Columbia Road remains up as a continued symbol of shared joy.

This project marks a critical transition point and growth in Cave’s practice in public space. Themes of togetherness, assemblage, and finding joy in sadness are hallmarks of Cave's civic-minded work.  Augment evolves Cave's interest in how bodies navigate civic spaces by engaging dedicated community partners and brokering thoughtful relationships with stakeholders in the neighborhoods where the artwork will be presented. 

By partnering with Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI) to host and facilitate a series of workshops designed to explore how we can come together to spread joy across communities Augment purposefully and thoughtfully engages with the spatial justice work DS4SI has been doing in Upham’s Corner over the last 8 years. At a time when the City of Boston has labeled Upham’s a new “Arts and Innovation District”, DS4SI seeks to mobilize local artists, organizations, and residents to imagine and prototype what the district could be like if it prioritized local cultures, communities and artists. 

Over 5 months, DS4SI and local artists Destiny Polk, L’Merchie Frazier, Barrington Edwards and Wilton Tejeda led collage workshops at Upham’s Corner community sites like the local library, churches, schools and community programs, gathering over 100 collages based on the prompt “what brings you joy?”  Each workshop fostered increased dialogue around public space, public art, and how joy is profoundly personal but also collective, shared and cultural.

In addition, DS4SI and Wilton Tejeda brought a mobile collage cart out on the streets to engage passers-by who might not know about the workshops or the upcoming installation. 

The images shared and stories told formed the basis for the building wrap at 555 Columbia Avenue, which surrounds the inflatable sculptures installed in the windows. The collages are also being exhibited in local businesses and on public light post flags. To Lori Lobenstine, DS4SI Program Design Lead, this public work is critical: “We want people to know this is coming and to feel a part of it. Each workshop was not just a chance to come together and express what brings us joy, but a chance for the community to hear about Nick Cave and what was coming to Upham’s.”

Local artist partners:

L'Merchie Frazier is a fiber artist, holographer and poet, has served as Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket for fifteen years, was an inaugural Boston Artist in Residence and a Destination Upham's artist with DS4SI.  

Barrington Edwards has been an artist and community activist in Boston for over four decades. He holds a BFA in Communication Design and a MSAE in Art Education from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is currently a member of the Visual Arts faculty at the Boston Arts Academy. He is a Surdna and an Expressing Boston fellow, a publisher of comics and graphic media and works as a freelance artist and consultant. Barrington is a member of the Boston Comics Roundtable, a co-founder of Comics in Color (an affinity group for nerds of color), active with DS4SI, and with the Black Speculative Arts Movement. He currently works to develop his practice as an art maker and social practice developer in concert with his teaching practice. 

Destiny Polk is the founder of Radical Black Girl, a multi-media artist, Destination Upham's artist, and currently a resident artist at Hibernian Hall’s new artist residency program.

Wilton Tejeda is a visual artist, MassArt student, former ExpressingBoston Public Art Fellow at DS4SI, and a mentor at Artists for Humanity (AFH). 

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The Joy Parade

SEPTEMBER 14, 2019
South end to upham’s corner

We took the jubilation of Nick Cave’s Augment to the streets with Boston’s first-ever joy parade! The inflatables along with more than 75 Boston-area artists & performers, and 500 members of the public joined in a celebratory three-mile procession relocating the sculpture, creating a joyful public spectacle, and bridging the South End and Upham’s Corner neighborhoods.

On October 20, 2020, Cave’s inflatables found new life at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. The building wrap at 555 Columbia Road remains up as a continued symbol of shared joy.

Together with our partners, we activated neighborhoods from the South End to Upham’s Corner, celebrating community joy, and putting the power of collective making on display.

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The Exhibit

Colorful, wild, witty, and fantastical, the one-of-a-kind sculpture at the heart of Augment was exhibited to the public from August 8, 2019 through September 13, 2019 at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts in Boston’s South End.

Comprised of five different but cohesive assemblages, was suspended in air, filling the 56,000 square foot space with a cacophony of visual imagery. With the use of fans the sculpture was constantly in motion, inflating and deflating, creating the illusion of breath and a lively immersion experience for the audience. Calling on well-known cultural touchstones and images, the sculpture was crafted by the artist of more than 1,000 inflatable lawn decorations.

During the exhibit the public was invited to walk under, and amidst the floating sculpture and take in the whimsy, happiness, and sharp wit of Nick Cave and provided unexpected moments of recognition, nostalgia, connection, and delight.

On October 20, 2020, Cave’s inflatables found new life at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. The building wrap at 555 Columbia Road remains up as a continued symbol of shared joy.

All Photo: Melissa Ostrow

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Nick Cave

Messenger first, Artist Second

Augment marks a new avenue for Cave’s practice in public space. Themes of togetherness, assemblage, and finding joy in sadness are hallmarks of Cave's civic-minded work.

Nick Cave’s public collections include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and the Trapholt Museum, Kolding, Denmark, among others.

Cave has received several prestigious awards including: the Americans for the Arts 2014 Public Art Network Year in Review Award (2014) in recognition of his Grand Central Terminal performance Heard - NY, Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2008), Artadia Award (2006), the Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grants (2002, 2004 and 2005), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001). Cave, who received his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, is Professor and Chairman of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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 WBUR/The ARTery 10 Visual Art Installations That Made Us Think in 2019 December 23, 2019

“Created in a spirit of joy and inclusiveness, and in partnership with local community organizations, Augment offers a model that I hope more art presenters will emulate.”

WBUR/The ARTery 2019 In Boston Arts: A Year Of Convening December 23, 2019

“The project gathered folks for more than a dozen workshops to explore what sparked joy for them and to express it by parading through the streets.”

The Boston Globe The Ticket: What’s Happening in the Public Art World August 4, 2019

“The indefatigable installation and performance artist Nick Cave commences a months-long project presented by public art curator Now + There with an exhibition that fills the Cyclorama with a sculpture made of 1,000 inflatable lawn ornaments.”

Wonderland What Brings You Joy?—Nick Cave Fills Boston Cyclorama With Holiday Inflatables August 7, 2019

“Cave says he has been thinking about the term ‘augment,’ this notion to ‘enhance or making things better,’ and thinking about ‘things that we need to feed our souls.’”

The Boston Globe Inflatable cartoon monsters feel like ‘a form of protest’ at South End’s Cyclorama August 9, 2019

“With Now + There, Cave chose to work with more than a dozen community agencies in Uphams Corner, an impoverished sector of Dorchester surrounded by the competing pressures of crime and intensifying commercial development.”

WBUR/The ARTery Creepy, Colorful, Inflatable Sculptures Bring Nick Cave Joy. So He's Bringing Them To Boston August 9

“That idea of breaking the barrier between art-world elite and community arts is very on-brand for Cave, who often invites the public to participate in his work. For ‘Augment,’ Now + There partnered with DS4SI.”

Cultured Magazine Nick Cave Bring His Inflatable Parade to Boston August 11

“For Nick Cave, art is all about happiness: what it is, what it means to us, and how to find it in a world so often overshadowed by injustice.”

Surface Magazine Artist Nick Cave Spreads a Little Joy August 15

“With themes of togetherness and spreading joy throughout the city, artist Nick Cave brings a sense of community to Boston with Augment, a three-part project with public art agency Now + There.”

Boston Art Review A Joy Ride with Nick Cave September 11

“The process brings me the joy, and through process is the result, which allows me to deliver it to the community at large.”

WBUR/The ARTery Photos: See Nick Cave's Giant Inflatable Sculpture Parade From South End To Upham's Corner September 15

“Commissioned by public art organization Now + There, Augment consists of a community-driven vinyl building wrap on the side of a building in Upham's Corner, a collection of massive inflatable sculptures and a parade.”

Wonderland Photos: Nick Cave's 'Joy Parade' In Boston September 15

“Artist Nick Cave’s Joy Parade escorted the Chicago artist’s inflatable sculptures (pictured above) from the Boston Center for the Arts to 555 Columbia Ave. in Uphams Corner in Boston, where they will be exhibited through April 2020.”

New York Times Style Magazine Nick Cave is the most Joyful, and Critical, Artist in America October 20, 2019

“Cave understands that the lost art of creating community, of joining forces to accomplish a task at hand, whether it’s beading a curtain or mending the tattered social fabric, depends upon igniting a kind of dreaming, a gameness, a childlike ability to imagine ideas into being. But it also involves recognizing the disparate histories that divide and bind us. The strength of any group depends on an awareness of its individuals.”

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Partners

Produced in partnership with

design studio for social intervention

DS4SI’s mission is to change how social justice is imagined, developed and deployed in the U.S. Situated at the intersections of design thinking and practice, social justice and activism, public art and social practice, and civic / popular engagement, we design and test social interventions with and on behalf of marginalized populations, controversies and ways of life.

with generous support from