BEAD IT UP
On the tail end of his first solo museum exhibition, sculptor and performance artist Raúl de Nieves reflects on the queer spaces that shaped him.
HERE IS NO LOCK ON THE DOOR of Raúl de Nieves’ studio—at first glance, in fact, there is little precious to be found, just walls lined with plastic bags and lucite containers cradling the everyday craft supplies for which the sculptor and performance artist’s work has become synonymous: thousands upon thousands of candy-colored microbeads; flimsy plastic masks resembling animals mask, de Nieves notes, was rescued from a dumpster); and tiny, jingling metal bells. Countless hours of repetitious hand-sewing and hot gluing will see glittering piles of the miniscule matter, like cells to a body, meet to form joyful, towering sculptures: anthropomorphic stalactites that are as much evocative of Medieval armor and Catholic idolatry as they are of the larger-than-life club-kid costumery cultured within New York’s ravey underground, where de Nieves is a regular face. “Sometimes I feel like some crazy person that’s painting the same thing for years just to see what happens,” he says, hovering above a collapsible table in the center of a humble, one-room Brooklyn studio.
