A new retrospective of American artist Theaster Gates opened this week at Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills. “Afro-Mingei” claims to be the largest solo show ever of a Black artist in Japan. Ambitious in scale, promiscuous in genre and didactic in tone, the exhibit gives viewers plenty and more to chew on.
Gates is a ceramist by training, and his current practice might best be described as “mayoral.” He rose to prominence for his influential urban revitalisation projects on Chicago’s South Side, for which he transforms dilapidated buildings into art and community spaces. Gates’ work is also archival; he acquires large collections of art, music and literature to preserve Black American culture.
Gates has maintained a personal connection to Japan since 2004, when he studied pottery in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, as part of a residency for international artists. Typically Gates brings art to Chicago for its Black residents, but with “Afro-Mingei” he brings Black Chicago to the world. Drawing a line between Aichi and Chicago may seem odd, but the show gives it an earnest go.
Mingei (literally “arts of the people”) is a century-old movement that aimed to elevate “folk” art by unnamed craftspeople to the level of art. “Afro-mingei” is a phrase coined by Gates that sounds like a new art school, but as one text explains, it is “a speculation and a proposal more than it is a promise.” It’s more useful for viewers to recognize that, more than anything, this is a personal concept for the artist. And overall the show works best when it doesn’t try so hard to justify itself.
The first gallery, “Shrine,” strikes an appropriately somber note. “A Heavenly Chord” is a handsome installation that lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches. Performance is another of Gates’ many facets, and musical events are planned for throughout the exhibition run.
The show conveys the full breadth and influence of Gates’ oeuvre, even if the narrative is disjointed. The works made by Gates himself (rather than the found objects or pieces paying tribute to other artists) in particular are a pleasure to see collected together, beautiful objects of craftsmanship that reflect deep scholarship.
“Armory cross #2,” made from the original pinewood floor of the Park Avenue Armory, an art space in New York that was once a real armory, honors Black American soldiers dispatched to the Vietnam War. The geometric stripes are a reference to the abstract color fields of modernists like Frank Stella, but the piece also serves to critique the dominant whiteness of the movement. Similarly, “Yellow Tapestry with Black Stitch” appears at first to be a work that draws on minimalist traditions of form and self-reference, but it turns out to be composed of decommissioned fire hoses, a commentary on police violence against the peaceful civil rights protestors of the 1960s.
In a room called simply “Blackness,” pots crafted from African, Japanese, Korean and Chinese traditions, and fired in a Chicago kiln similar to the anagama kilns of Tokoname, line one wall. A few vessels are collaborations with Bottega Veneta creative director Matthieu Blazy. Using woven leather, the designs resemble someone striking a pose or a woman with a long braided ponytail.
The last gallery is flashy and a little scattered. A thousand binbō tokkuri (refillable sake bottles) line the wall behind a bar, along with the nearly 20,000-object collection of Tokoname potter Yoshihiro Koide, which Gates acquired after he passed away in 2022. Custom carrying bags for Gates’ pots, made by Prada; a banner designed with 336-year-old textile company Hosoo; a custom sake co-created with Sawada Shuzo, a 176-year-old Tokoname brewery, all demonstrate the power of Gates as a brand himself.
One section was perplexing: A large and meticulous timeline shows concurrent moments in the histories of Japanese craft and Black Americans. Line up the years, and a pattern starts to emerge. For every so-and-so craftsperson visiting such-and-such elite art institution in Japan, Black Americans were losing or winning a major battle for simple human dignity. For example, in March 1931, Shoji Hamada built a climbing kiln in his house as nine Black teenage boys were being falsely sentenced for the rape of two white women. Presented without commentary, this timeline misses a chance to be truly edifying. What could serve as a challenging moment for the Japanese audience, one meant to inspire inner reflection, is instead presented neutrally — and, therefore, timidly.
Still, the educational component of the show, however clunky, is ultimately appreciated. In Japan, with its colonial history and its fair share of blaxploitation in pop culture, a show like “Afro-Mingei” runs the risk of falling into a trap of a “white” gaze on, and aestheticization of, Blackness. Time will tell if the show is a hit with Japanese audiences, but either way visitors will surely leave the museum having learned something.