Here's how the Chicago artist theaster gates has incubated new models for social transformation and art, including sculpture, painting, ceramics, video, performance and music. His art is the result of ambitious urban renewal projects, creating hubs and archives for black culture, which serve as catalysts for discussions about race, equality, space and history.
For this exposition in Paris, Theater Gates started a new project that explores the social histories of migration and interracial relationships using a specific episode in American history as a starting point to address larger issues of black subjugation and imperial sexual domination and race-mixing that resulted from it. These historical themes and their realities have given rise to new cinematic, sculptural and musical perspectives in Theater Gates' oeuvre, allowing Theaster Gates to examine the history of land ownership and race relations in the Northeastern United States.
The exhibition titled “Amalgam,” is the story of the island of Malaga in the state of Maine, USA: in 1912, the governor of the state expelled from Malaga the poorest population, a mixed interracial community of about 45 people, considered "Indolent" by many of the local white inhabitants. These unfortunate people were forced to move across the continent; some have even been involuntarily committed to psychiatric institutions.
The technical term "amalgam" was also used in the past to indicate racial, ethnic and religious mixing. For Theater Gates, it has taken on an even more charged meaning, propelling his practice into new formal and conceptual explorations in film, sculpture, architecture and music.
Exhibition curator: Katell Jaffrès
Theater Gates (1973, lives in Chicago) works as an artist and earth theorist. His practice includes sculpture, installation, performance and urban interventions that demonstrate the enormous use value in economically destabilized communities. His projects attempt to instigate the creation of cultural capital by serving as catalysts for social engagement that leads to political and spatial change. Theaster Gates has described his method as “critique through collaboration” – often working with architects, researchers and artists to create works that expand ideas about what visual practices can be.
Theaster Gates has had solo exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including the Museu de Serralves (Porto) in 2014 and MCA Chicago in 2013. The recent project “The Black Madonna” has been developed across media, from performance to photography and music, exploring the history of the black woman and her image. The project makes use of the photographic archives of the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Jet and Ebony magazines, based in Chicago.
“The Black Madonna” was presented at the Kunstmuseum Basel (9 June – 21 October 2018) and at the Sprengel Museum Hannover (23 June – 09 September 2018). Theaster Gates has participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennale, New York in 2010 and Documenta 13, Kassel in 2012, and most recently the 56th Venice Biennale and the 14th Istanbul Biennale in 2015. He regularly hosts live events with his ensembles musical, the Black Monks of Mississippi.
Currently, Theater Gates is Distinguished Guest Artist and Director of Artist Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art, Waterville, Maine.
