American contemporary artist Theaster Gates (b. 1973) presents his solo exhibition 《African Still Life》 at White Cube Seoul from November 4 to December 18, 2026.
 
His first solo exhibition in South Korea explores how the histories and memories of Black culture are translated into the visual language of contemporary art through ceramic sculpture, music, and archival practices.
 
Gates is known for an artistic practice spanning sculpture, installation, performance, architecture, and urban regeneration, through which he investigates the relationship between art and society. Working primarily on Chicago’s South Side, he has collected and repurposed abandoned buildings and cultural materials, transforming them into spaces that preserve the memories of communities whose histories have been marginalized while creating new opportunities for cultural engagement.

Ceramics and Music: Two Mediums for Holding Memory
 
Ceramics occupies a central place in Gates’ practice. Rather than confining it to the traditional realm of craft, he approaches ceramics as a sculptural medium in which material, labor, time, and history accumulate. The process of shaping and firing clay is not merely a physical transformation of material but also an act of reconfiguring traces of the past into new forms in the present.
 
In 《African Still Life》, Gates brings this ceramic practice into dialogue with music. Taking the traditional artistic genre of still life as a point of departure, the exhibition explores how objects, through the cultural memories and historical experiences they embody, can move beyond their conventional role as subjects of representation.
 
The musical archive presented in the exhibition conveys cultural memory in ways distinct from visual objects. Unlike physical artifacts, sound cannot be fixed in a single material form, yet it remains an important medium through which the experiences of particular periods and communities can be preserved and transmitted. Visitors encounter ceramic works while listening to music, experiencing how objects and sounds construct memory through different sensory registers.

Reading Cultural Identity Through the Arrangement of Objects
 
One of the notable works in the exhibition is African Still Life #4 (2026), which brings together East Asian scholar’s rocks, an antique brass shoeshine stand, a memorial flag, and Maison Margiela Tabi roller skates.
 
Objects originating from different historical periods and cultural contexts establish new relationships within a single sculptural composition. In particular, the combination of traditional Japanese Tabi footwear with Chicago’s Black roller-skating culture suggests that Gates is less concerned with tracing a singular, culturally pure origin than with exploring how different traditions intersect, transform, and generate new meanings.
 
Gates understands such arrangements as both a form of self-portraiture and a structure resembling an ancestral altar. Here, still life becomes more than an assemblage of objects placed before the viewer. It emerges as a site where personal experience, collective history, and cultural lineage overlap.
 
In new works such as Receding Cloud at the Golden Time of Day and Black Moon (2026), Gates also explores sculptural structures reminiscent of Buddhist mandalas and stupas through geometric forms and ceramic surfaces. These works demonstrate how his practice, while rooted in African American cultural experience, continues to engage with Asian religious and aesthetic traditions.

The Archive of Sound: Bringing the Past into the Present
 
The exhibition’s second space is conceived as a listening environment. It presents an archive of more than 14,000 sound recordings collected by Dinh Nguyen, a French-Vietnamese DJ and record collector.
 
Nguyen’s collection encompasses a wide range of musical traditions, with particular attention to music from Réunion and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, as well as the Caribbean. Following Nguyen’s death in 2022, questions surrounding the preservation and inheritance of his collection raised broader concerns about how these cultural materials could be maintained and shared in the future.
 
Rather than keeping the collection as a private archive, Gates transforms it into a shared cultural experience by allowing visitors to listen to the recordings. Inspired by Korea’s listening-bar culture, the space invites audiences not only to look at artworks but also to spend time listening.
 
 
 
What Can Art Preserve, and What Can It Bring Back to Life?
 
Gates’ artistic practice does not regard cultural heritage merely as something to be preserved. What matters to him is how objects and records from the past can generate new relationships and experiences within contemporary society.
 
From this perspective, 《African Still Life》 is not only an exhibition addressing the history and identity of Black culture but also an inquiry into the ownership, preservation, and transmission of cultural heritage. By bringing African and Asian cultural traditions into dialogue, Gates’ work encourages viewers to understand cultural identity not as a fixed origin or singular tradition, but as a set of relationships that are continually formed and transformed.
 
At White Cube Seoul, 《African Still Life》 demonstrates how contemporary art can move beyond remembering the past through objects and records, transforming cultural memory into new forms of experience and social connection.
 
 
 
About the Artist | Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates is a Chicago-based American artist, urban planner, and cultural organizer whose practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, architecture, archives, and socially engaged art. Beginning with ceramics, he has developed an interdisciplinary practice that investigates the social role of art and the value of cultural heritage.
 
Gates studied urban planning and ceramics at Iowa State University and pursued ceramic training in Tokoname, Japan. He later earned a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of Cape Town. These academic and cross-cultural experiences provided an important foundation for his distinctive approach to connecting material, ritual, community, and urban space.

One of his best-known initiatives, Dorchester Projects, is a long-term undertaking that has transformed abandoned buildings on Chicago’s South Side into libraries, archives, and cultural spaces. Building on this work, Gates founded the nonprofit Rebuild Foundation in 2010 to preserve local cultural resources and promote community development through art-led urban regeneration.
 
Through projects such as Black Image Corporation and Black Archive, Gates has also continued to engage with the preservation and accessibility of Black cultural imagery and historical records, exploring how marginalized histories can be recovered, reinterpreted, and made publicly accessible.
 
Gates participated in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012, and the 2015 Venice Biennale. His work has been presented at major institutions including the Serpentine Galleries in London, the Walker Art Center, and the New Museum in New York. In 2018, he received the Nasher Prize.
 
His practice is widely recognized for demonstrating how art can operate beyond museums and galleries, taking on meaningful social roles within cities and communities. By connecting the production of sculptural objects with the preservation of cultural archives and the regeneration of urban spaces, Gates has expanded the social and institutional possibilities of contemporary art.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition: 《African Still Life》
Artist: Theaster Gates
Dates: November 4–December 18, 2026
Venue: White Cube Seoul
Address: 6 Dosan-daero 45-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Website: https://www.whitecube.com