Afro-Mingei
The catalogue for Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei, the American artist's first solo exhibition in Japan, held at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in 2024.
Published by torch press and edited by the Mori Art Museum, the 272-page, Japanese/English bilingual volume documents Gates's coinage "Afro-Mingei," a fusion of the Japanese Mingei (folk-craft) movement with African American culture. Trained as a sculptor and urban planner, Gates first travelled to Japan in 2004 to study ceramics in Tokoname the book threads installation views with interlocking timelines (Tokoname pottery, the Mingei movement, the fictional potter Shoji Yamaguchi, Black American history, and Gates's own biography) alongside his architectural projects, three essays, and an interview with the artist by museum director Mami Kataoka. Texts by Hirokazu Tokuyama, Coco Fusco, and Chelsea Foxwell.
Theaster Gates (b. 1973, Chicago) is a social-practice artist, ceramist, and urban planner whose work spans object-making, performance, and the revival of Chicago's South Side through his Rebuild Foundation and the Stony Island Arts Bank. He has exhibited widely at major international institutions and is represented by Gagosian and White Cube.
