Nick Cave was born in Fulton, Missouri in 1959. He creates “Soundsuits”—surreally majestic objects blending fashion and sculpture—that originated as metaphorical suits of armor in response to the ...

Theaster Gates was born in Chicago in 1973. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures ...

Elle Pérez was born in 1989 in Bronx, New York and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since receiving their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2015, Pérez has worked primarily in photography, ...

Nancy Spero discusses her reasons for creating politically-motivated works. ART21: When did your attention turn to political subject matter? SPERO: I think my political instincts came by having a ...

Jason Moran was born in 1975 in Houston, Texas. A pianist, composer, and bandleader, Moran received a B.M. from the Manhattan School of Music in 1997. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and is ...

Art21 is the world’s leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and expand access to contemporary art through the production of documentary films ...

Sarah Sze was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1969. Sze builds her installations and intricate sculptures from the minutiae of everyday life, imbuing mundane materials, marks, and processes with ...

Brian Jungen was born in Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada in 1970. He draws from his family’s ranching and hunting background, as well as his Dane-zaa heritage, when disassembling and ...

Addressing questions of how objects acquire value, Sarah Sze posits that being an artist is about giving yourself permission to make choices. Art21 What was the influence of science and architecture ...

Gabriel Orozco discusses his artworks that play on various types of games, and how those works relate to underlying theoretical concepts. ART21: Ping Pond Table—where did the idea for that work come ...

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction. After earning ...

Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1961. He received a BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from ...