Year: 2021
Medium: Neon mounted on aluminum backing
Dimensions: 36 1/2h x 34 3/4w x 10.16d in 92.71h x 88.27w x 10.16d cm
Acquired from Monastery Foundation, 2022
While Theastar Gates, who studied sculpture, ceramics, urban planning, and religious studies at university, is recognized for his groundbreaking projects that aim to revitalize the Black community in Chicago's South Side, he regards himself as being a potter at heart. Having studied pottery in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture in 1999, and frequently visiting Japan ever since, Gates deeply resonates with the concepts and philosophies of Japanese “Mingei” (folk art and crafts), and in recent years has been working on what he refers to as "Afro-Mingei," which combines Japanese philosophy and Black identity. This work was exhibited at "STILL ALIVE International Art Festival Aichi 2022" in the installation "The Listening House," made by converting an old residential building in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture that had been dormant. Framed by the blue neon tubing is a chart illustrating the percentage of African-American who serve as slaves—one of several statistical documents exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition by American sociologist and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois that provided information on Black American history and the actual live and circumstances of African Americans at the turn of the century. Over the course of 70 years spanning from 1790 on the far left going towards the right, the ratio of slaves shown in black in the lower part of the image gradually continue to overwhelm the neon tubing (= freedom) in the upper section, Finally, following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, 100 percent of African-Americans have managed to attain freedom by 1870 as indicated on the far right. The neon sculpture, while harboring an incisive gaze that sheds light on the dark history of American society that is reflected to the present day, permeates with an air of nostalgia and poetry.
