Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei

Message from the Artist, Theaster Gates

For more than 20 years, the Mingei movement has been an important guidepost for me in understanding the mechanics of celebration associated with the beauty that a people make. The Mingei movement, like the Black Power movement of the United States, was attempting to preserve and honor a very specific past as the west quickly encroached. While both had blind spots, biases and detractors, their resolve was to celebrate the local, raise awareness of beauty and honor the power of culture. Afro-Mingei is an attempt to marry the most significant movements of my artistic journey.

Biography

Born 1973 in Chicago, IL, where he continues to live, Theaster Gates studied urban design, ceramics, religion, and visual art at Iowa State University and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He masterfully translates the intricacies of Blackness through clay, objecthood, music, film, space and materiality. In 2004, Gates began his now twenty-year engagement with the ceramic legacies of the city of Tokoname in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, where he participated in the International Workshop of Ceramic Art in Tokoname [IWCAT] homestay program and continues to honor and artistically invest in local makers and craft histories. In recent years, he has had major solo exhibitions at such institutions as the New Museum (New York, 2022-2023), Serpentine Pavilion (London, 2022), Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2021), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2019-2020), Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin, 2019), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2019), and Fondazione Prada (Milan, 2018). In Japan, Gates exhibited at the Aichi Triennale 2022, and in 2019 was selected for the Obayashi Foundation Research Program, “Visions of the City.”