ART CITIES: London-Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates trained as both a sculptor and an urban planner, and his practice contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise, defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. His practice includes sculpture, installation, performance, urban intervention and land development. Through his work as an artist, archivist, and curator, Gates seeks to instigate the creation of cultural communities by acting as catalysts for social engagement that leads to political and spatial change.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive

Commemorating Malcolm X on the centenary of his birth and 60th anniversary of his assassination, the exhibition “1965: Malcolm in the Winter: A Translation Exercise” marks Theaster Gates’s first contact with the archive of late Japanese journalist Ei Nagata and his partner Haruhi Ishitani. Through a series of architectural interventions, large-scale installations, archival works and new film works, Gates engages with the methods of care and preservation nurtured in Japanese philosophy and craftsmanship, drawing upon them as a framework to consider the role of art and aesthetics in shaping political, ideological and cultural legacies. Having cultivated a relationship with Japan for over two decades, first during his training residency as a ceramicist in 2004, then Gates’s latest creative endeavour stems from his encounter with Ishitani following his 2024 solo exhibition “Afro-Mingei” at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Ishitani and Nagata had both been present at Malcolm X’s assassination on 21/2/1965, shortly after he addressed the crowd at an Organization of Afro-American Unity (OOAU) event. Moved to action by this catalytic moment, they endeavoured to carry his message beyond the US to Japan, where the Black American fight for civil rights found renewed resonance in the Japanese left’s struggles against militarism and the legacy of occupation. Together, Nagata and Ishitani devoted themselves to documenting and translating the pivotal final months of Malcolm X’s life, the aftermath of his death and the currents of the broader Black Liberation Movement, bringing this history into the awareness of the Japanese public. Bringing to the fore Gates’s reciprocal modes as artist, archivist, curator and cultural interlocutor, the exhibition draws the archive into the evolving scope of his artistic repertoire. Revisiting his investigations into roofing materials and techniques, Gates expands the vocabulary of his ongoing “Tar Paintings” series by introducing political imagery and acronyms for the first time, including the iconography of the Civil Rights era, the logos and visual lexicon of Black liberation movements such as the OOAU and the Black Panther Party. Three freestanding tar paintings, mounted on wooden structures along the gallery’s corridor, form part of a new series within Gates’s ongoing body of tar works; layering collaged segments of brightly painted roofing material with elements of Japanese ink calligraphy on paper, Gates fuses language and symbolism with more formal investigations of color, scale and dimensionality. A suite of seven new works titled “Black Ads’”(2025) build upon the visual language of propaganda and advertisement. Emphasising the notion of the artist-as-caretaker, Gates’s lightboxes display images from the University of Chicago’s archival collection of glass lantern slides – a vast repository spanning art and architectural history from the Palaeolithic period to the modern era, of which fewer than 100 of its 60,000 works depict African art. The slides feature alongside Japanese text from Ishitani’s archive and portraits of Black life taken from the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) archive, an archive which Gates has been engaging with for over a decade in his artistic practice. “Ebony” magazines from the JPC archive are also housed within the library installation “Abstract Revolutionary Periodical Superstructure (I stole the Master’s library shelving and filled it with books)” (2025) features a steel bookshelf salvaged by Gates from the Carnegie Library at the University of Iowa. The large-scale installation “A libation in Uncertain Times” (2024) serves as one of the exhibition’s focal points, one envisioned by Gates as a celebration of cultural exchange and synergies. Featuring approximately 1,000 binbo tokkuri (traditional Japanese sake vessels produced in the Edo period (1603–1868) and marked with family crests )  these tokkuri were sourced in collaboration with potter Tani Q and now bear the name of Gates’s production company in Japan. Exploring how ceremony and ritual facilitate transitions between communal and private realms, the sculpture “Malcolm’s Hut” (2025) draws inspiration from traditional Japanese tea houses. Connecting Gates’s exploration of Black histories with the ethos of care and respect embedded in Japanese culture, the work’s title underscores his endeavour to unearth, and make visible, the intersections of Blackness within Japan. Activating these ideas across social spheres – through material culture and, in other contexts, music – Gates probes how a Japanese aesthetic can be mobilised to express and articulate a Black politic. Gates’s mode of salvaging and repurposing his materials resonates with a broader interrogation of art’s formal traditions. “A Path, East Facing” (2025) establishes a walkway reminiscent of the passage guided by torii gates, traditionally used to mark the entrances of Shinto shrines in Japan. Constructed from Azobe wood beams – a West African hardwood regarded for its exceptional durability – Gates’s reclamation imbues the wood with renewed significance, transforming it into a metaphorical threshold: a contemplative space for the spiritual transition from the mundane to the sacred in Japanese worship. Three large wooden “Huts” (2021/25) – constructed from salvaged pinewood obtained during the renovation of New York’s Park Avenue Armory building, invoke the deductive structures and rigid geometries found in the works of Frank Stella and Sol LeWitt. Recounting their intimate encounters with this revolutionary moment in history, Nagata and Ishitani’s archive occupies a poignant place in Gates’s dedication to Malcolm X, three newly conceived films enliven the archive through orated passages, historical footage, and an evocative performance by a Japanese shamisen player, who re-interprets blues, prayer songs, and melodies by the Black Monks, the musical group assembled by Gates, on his traditional string instrument. The featured film highlights Ishitani reciting one of Malcolm X’s final speeches, “Prospects for Freedom” (1965) – translated into Japanese by herself and Nagata. Since Nagata’s passing, Ishitani’s care and stewardship of the archive has become a touchstone for Gates, inspired as he is by the couple’s shared commitment to broadening the archive’s scope of engagement and his personal investments in the archive’s activation.

Photo: Theaster Gates, Orb (Wharlest Jackson) 2023, High fire stoneware and manganese dioxide on marble plinth, Vessel: 60.5 x 59 x 50.5 cm | 23 13/16 x 23 1/4 x 19 7/8 in., Plinth: 11 x 58.4 x 41.6 cm | 4 5/16 x 23 x 16 3/8 in., © Theaster Gates, Courtesy the artist and White Cube Gallery

Info: White Cube Gallery, 144-152 Bermondsey Street. London, United Kingdom, Duration: 7/2-6/4/2025, Days & Hours:  Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, www.whitecube.com/