Commission
Theaster Gates
Serpentine Pavilion 2022
June 10–October 16, 2022
Serpentine Pavilion, London
www.serpentinegalleries.org
Theaster Gates has been commissioned to design the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion in London. Realized with the architectural support of Adjaye Associates and set within Serpentine’s grounds in Kensington Gardens, Black Chapel draws inspiration from the architectural typologies of both chapels and the kilns of Stoke-on-Trent, England, paying homage to British craft and manufacturing traditions. Continuing Gates’s ongoing experimentation with clay objects in his studio practice, the design also reflects the artist’s interest in space making through various urban revitalization projects. Open annually from June to October, the Serpentine Pavilion has become an international site for architectural experimentation.
To mark the opening of the Pavilion, Gates and Sir David Adjaye will be in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist on June 8 at 2pm. The wide-ranging discussion will encompass their respective work in art, architecture, urbanism, and space making. To attend the event, purchase tickets at ticketing.serpentingegalleries.org.
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Serpentine Pavilion 2022: Black Chapel by Theaster Gates, London, 2022. Artwork © Theaster Gates. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy Serpentine
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Award
Theaster Gates
Vincent Scully Prize 2023
Theaster Gates has been named the 2023 winner of the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize. Established in 1999, the award recognizes excellence in practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. The jury was impressed by Gates’s collecting practice, which in addition to the constellation of Black spaces on Chicago’s South Side that he is actively creating, includes a number of historic record collections, such as those of the godfather of house music, Frankie Knuckles, and the Olympic runner Jesse Owens; over fifteen thousand objects from the legendary Johnson Publishing Company offices; Edward J. Williams and Ana Williams’s collection of approximately four thousand objects of “negrobilia” that make use of stereotypical images of Black people; over sixty thousand glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago; and the fourteen-thousand-volume Prairie Avenue Bookshop Archive.
Theaster Gates at his studio in Chicago, 2020. Photo: Lyndon French
Permanent Installation
Theaster Gates
Altar for the Unbanned
Theaster Gates’s Altar for the Unbanned has been permanently installed at the Harold Washington Library Center branch of the Chicago Public Library (CPL). It features spiral shelves of books that have been banned at different points in American history topped by a rotating neon sign of the word “unbanned.” Actively responding to rising demands for censorship through public organizing, CPL partnered with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to commission Gates’s installation. Library officials hope this public artwork will expose citizens to banned titles and encourage them to engage with these books.
Theaster Gates, Altar for the Unbanned, 2023, installation view, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library © Theaster Gates
Installation
Theaster Gates
Min | Mon
Open from July 2, 2023
Luma Arles, France
www.luma.org
Min | Mon by Theaster Gates highlights the ritual, conviviality, and cultural hybridity often at the heart of his projects. Temple, a central structure using materials from Gates’s earliest exhibitions, deepens his exploration of “Afro-Mingei”—an inquiry into the intersection of Black cultural aesthetics and mingei, a Japanese movement honoring the handmade craftsmanship of ordinary utilitarian objects. Uniting key strands of his work, Gates has developed a participatory installation with a DJ booth featuring the artist’s own collection of vinyl records and a bar offering a new sake produced by Gates with the Hakurou brand in Tokoname, Japan. Min | Mon exemplifies Gates’s engagement with ceremony in Eastern culture while giving form to complex truths about craft, labor, value, and origin.
Theaster Gates, Temple Exercises, 2009 © Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley, courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
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