Theaster Gates. Resurrections
Theaster Gates (b. 1973, Chicago) is a contemporary creative thinker: an artist, curator, urbanist and facilitator, he uses sculpture, installation, performance and other interventions in an attempt to instigate cultural communities and catalyze political and social engagement. In advance of his upcoming exhibition “Amalgam” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Gates – recently awarded the Nasher Prize 2018 – discusses with Victoria Sung his latest projects, the role of artists in society, and the importance of “life demonstrations.”
“THE BLACK IMAGE CORPORATION,” FONDAZIONE PRADA OSSERVATORIO, MILAN, THROUGH JANUARY 14, 2019. “THEASTER GATES. AMALGAM,” PALAIS DE TOKYO, PARIS, FROM FEBRUARY 18, 2019.
VICTORIA SUNG: You recently opened two exhibitions, “The Black Image Corporation” at Fondazione Prada Osservatorio, Milan (through January 14, 2019) and “Black Madonna” at Kunstmuseum Basel (JuneOctober 2018). When I think about these two shows, and perhaps a show like “Black Archive,” which you did at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria in 2016, I see a certain shift in your practice, or at least in its perception. Can you talk a bit about these projects in relation to one another and in the context of your work in general? THEASTER GATES: I’ve been practicing professionally for only eight years. In the first couple of years, because I was using materials from a particular place and the work was referencing that place, I think people tried to peg the project before it had time to mature. People assumed that it was about recycled materials, upcycling, and waste stream management. But I think it was really about a deterministic desire to demonstrate that things had life in them, and that the life demonstrations – which sometimes I refer to as resurrections – could be not only in a piece of wood or a piece of concrete, but also in an archive or a building. As I grew the practice it became more evident that the larger project had to do with habitation and activation, which could take any number of forms. In some ways, then, “Black Archive,” “Black Madonna,” and “The Black Image Corporation” are projects where I was demonstrating for myself the continuum of activation – but it was no longer just about space, it was also about companies, ideas, histories. The deployment looks different, even though the primary ambition, the hypothesis is the same.
It’s interesting to hear you talk about this desire to inject new energy into things in order, as you put it, to resurrect them. You pointed out how initially you started with overlooked materials, spaces, and neighborhoods tied to specific places like Dorchester Projects on the South Side of Chicago. With what new forms, or in which ways, do you see your practice taking shape today?
On one level I feel like a formalist, in the sense that I’m interested in the form that is most appropriate to the subject. For the Johnson Publishing Company, what seemed the most appropriate form for the images circulated through its publications was to create a new company. In fact, I made several companies. Now, the Black Image Corporation will be a real company, Black Madonna Press will be a real company, and Black Madonna IP will cover all the work I do that deals with the subject of the black woman, so that in the same way that John Johnson was interested in propagating these images (you bought an issue of Jet magazine for 25 cents), the best way to pay homage to him is to create a form that complements his original form.
Another thing I’ve noticed in these more recent projects is that you’ve been giving form to the black experience through representations of the figure in a way that is different from your earlier formal, as you’ve said, architectural vocabulary. I’m in the process of building a vocabulary in my practice, which still feels fairly new for me. One part addresses how complicated notions of representation are, and from one project to the next it feels like an ongoing process, demonstrating the iterations of complex representation.
When you say “iterations of complex representation” I think about, on the one hand, the collection of “negrobilia” you drew upon in the making of “Black Archive,” which presents stereotypical, racist representations of black people, and on the other hand the images from Jet magazine used in “Black Madonna,” which illustrate the beauty of African-American women. Are these two examples of what you mean by this phrase?
Yeah, in the case of “Black Archive” I found myself demonstrating that there was life in the archive, of which I had 6,000 things, by focusing on two and saying, “Man, look how these two things could function as an index of the complexity of race relations in America and a fetishistic prevalence in Austria.” I was using these objects to work out my own questions about race and space and power – not subjugative power, but shamanistic power.
With the Johnson Publishing Company, then, it sounds like you’re propagating “form” at two levels. You’re propagating the ideal forms of female beauty circulated through magazines like Jet, and also propagating the larger institutional form of the company that produced the images in the first place. Do you find it challenging to toggle back and forth between the two forms?
There are times when I’m interested in really micro ideas, like estate planning and where my glass slide collection will go. Then there are times when I’m interested in tax laws and the implications for artists as they give things away. Can I write policies that change the tax laws? Or should I focus on only the things within my practice? I think that in some ways, the city making that I was trained to do allowed me to scale and understand big ideas and master plans that take 20 years to put into effect. Then there’s another part of me that’s really interested in stuff that remains at the level of a small and intimate studio. Moving between those two aspects is very exciting for me.
Speaking of scaling up and scaling down in terms of your focus, more than other artists I can think of, you’re someone who refuses or rejects any type of categorization. When I hear you talk about the different facets of your practice, it seems to encompass an entire roster of occupations – sculptor, ceramist, performer, of course, but also urban planner, estate planner, even tax lawyer. I’m interested in hearing you talk about this impulse not to be confined to a single way of doing things.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit actually. One of the things that I’ve really considered deeply is the place of the artist in relation to art history. Let’s say a person does a master’s in art history and they’re really focused on one thing. Then they start thinking about a PhD, so for example they decide to focus on Clyfford Still’s first three years of painting. So artists who are friends with art historians and want to be accepted into the canon are taught to narrow their practice and their conceptions to be smaller, and smaller, and smaller. So the
great modernist artists are those who have the ability to distill their projects to one thing, so that it can be studied with rigor, over and over. But if you do many things, this can be problematic. In my case, I wasn’t trained in an art school. In fact, I was trained as an urbanist, and the things that I do collectively feel like, let’s say, world making, or city making. If I’m in a neighborhood and it doesn’t have a church, and it doesn’t have a bank, and it doesn’t have a restaurant, and it doesn’t have a cultural center, and it doesn’t have affordable housing, and there are no artists, then why would I set my sights on just one thing? The entire fucking fabric needs to be repaired.You have to solve the problem, and so in some ways it could be said that the practice is just a series of attempts to solve simple problems that are right under my nose. And when those problems all go away, then perhaps I can focus only on painting. I’m not an expert restaurateur, I’m not an expert potter, I’m not an expert developer. Expertise isn’t the thing that I aspire to. I’m a problem solver.
If you were to define the role of an artist, would you say it is artist-as-problem solver?
It’s more like magically solving problems. It’s like conjurer slash problem solver, because sometimes the solutions are immaterial in nature. When I talk with people about, let’s say, the Christian cross… if you have not had an emotional experience with a sacred text, an intellectual experience, then a cross doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s just two sticks. The power of the cross has to do with someone’s ability to conjure power and direct the power toward the cross, and then that power can be directed toward the viewer, the witness of the cross. So I’m very interested in how a latent cross could become the most powerful material possible, because of the intellectual and emotional response to it. The Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago: for 30 years people went past that building and it was just a dilapidated building, and because they didn’t have the capacity to imagine personally having enough energy to conjure the thing, so it might speak to people again, they just thought, “Man, I wish somebody would do something with that.” So it’s not the action of the developer, that’s not enough. Because any smart developer would have stayed away from that building. Instead, it’s like: do you believe in the cross? The muscle that I have that is stronger than in most people is a belief muscle. And if I fix my gaze on the latent, sleepy object, and I believe it is my duty to bring more energy to the thing, that’s about practicing. I’m not trying to be religious. I’m just saying that the thing that I’m invested in is the process of reactivating these situations.
What are some of the questions that drive you lately? What do you find yourself grappling with in your practice? There’s a part of me that feels like maybe I didn’t do any of this right. That in all the building – building a reputation, building buildings – I was so determined to do it myself that I never felt the urgency to explain to people what my motivation was. Is it sculpture? Is it the creation of a mill, which is a thing that has the ability to make other things? Or in this case, the mill could make wood so that other artists and carpenters could build things. And so I go back and forth between being a thing maker and a maker of things that make other things.
Would it be accurate to say you’re a platform maker? In other words, you recognize that you have this unique ability to believe, and to get other people to believe, but you’re also putting in place the platforms, or mechanisms, for other people to enact new scenarios – and in doing so, you enlarge the reach of your projects. Right. What’s interesting about “The Black Image Corporation” is that at some point my participation has everything to do with the fact that I created a company that makes images. Do I have to make images every day? Absolutely not, but I own a company that believes in images.In a way, I’m a shape shifter in terms of wanting to own the company that produces metal, for example, but also wanting to be the company that forms metal, wanting to be the distributor of metal, and wanting to be the user of metal.
Do you feel that you need to choose just one function? It sounds like you’re trying to forge a way forward where you don’t have to make that decision. No, but I can’t say that it’s not a burden. You can hear it in my voice, it’s like, “Wow, I don’t know.” Capitalism has duped us into focusing on how to make the most efficient use of our time, how to make money, and as a result, people are so disconnected from their real collective purpose that it seems like nobody is actually doing anything they should be doing.There’s a part of me that just thinks I have to maintain a polyphonic rhythm, even if everybody around me is rhythmless. “Okay, you guys don’t know how to dance, but I can’t stop dancing.” And then people will say, “Oh, look at Theaster showing off.” But really, it’s like, “No, you just can’t dance.” It requires a certain kind of arrogance, and determinism, but that, to me, is just a person who feels purpose. We’re in a moment where we’re told to pick one thing and do it well. “If you want to be successful, do one thing.”
That is a trajectory of thought. And that might be an efficient way to live and to have a balanced life. Then there are other ways, and what I like is that these other ways have created an interruption in what we understand – which means that other things are possible.