Theaster Gates Question/Response

1. How do you use your architectural projects as tools for meditation and reflection?
2. How are your art and your activism related in your art works?

I wasn't sure how I felt about Theaster Gates's lecture when he first started speaking. He didn't seem to talk much about his work. He spoke about having "clay in his veins." He grew up as the son of a potter and clay always seemed to be part of his life. He started out making little clay houses, representing the lots in cities and urban development. But he realized after awhile that what he really wanted to do was go from the "gestural to the real." He was tired of feeling the burden of representation and he desired to be engaged with real communities and real people. Basically what he does is buy up buildings or demolish buildings and uses the pieces of these places to build new community spaces. He then invites everyone in the community to these places for art openings or exhibits. What happens is really interesting; totally polar opposite social groups come together and learn from each other, so everyone ends up benefiting from the event. Considering his work, Theaster Gates said that he likes "making things sacred that the world doesn't care about, and then making the world see things from his perspective." I really liked how he put that, I too enjoy the simple little things that most people ignore or don't care about and I like the fact that something as simple as building a shared community space has so much of an impact on the people that live there. By the end of the talk, I was really able to appreciate Gates's work. It raises interesting questions for me like "what is art?" I'm always excited to learn about new artists that don't practice making art in typical ways. Art can be anything, according to artists like Gates'. Art can be a "Museum of Afro-Asian Art" such as the space that he created in Chicago. In the end he ended up bringing a lot of people together that normally would never associate with each other. He kind of answered one of my questions about art and activism being related. The two go hand in hand. That's is his activism, the act of creating his art, that brings people together.