until Sunday September 01 2024

Mori Art Museum
53F, Roppongi Hills Mori Tower
Tokyo
Japan

Theaster Gates (b. 1973 in Chicago, IL) is an internationally-renowned artist whose practice encompasses a wide range of disciplines and mediums, with a focus on sculpture and ceramics but also including architecture, music and performance, and fashion and design. This is the first exhibition in Japan to offer a comprehensive overview of his work, and his largest presentation in the region to date.

This exhibition showcases a variety of works and projects from Gates’ oeuvre, including significant new works created for the exhibition and works with close connections to Japan: from his artistic origins and projects in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, to a question he calls “Afro-Mingei,” which is a philosophy put forth by Gates that is rooted in the cultural possibilities of fusing the Japanese Mingei folk art movement with movements centering Black beauty and aesthetics.

Theaster Gates masterfully translates the intricacies of Blackness through clay, objecthood, space, and materiality. While Black culture and history remain relatively little known among the Japanese public, this exhibition aims to convey the contemporary importance of art that celebrates craft, questions of race, politics, and cultural hybridity by offering a full overview of Gates’ practice.

Photo: Jim Prinz Photography