This is the first museum exhibition in France of Theaster Gates, conceptual king of the African-American scene. In the Palais de Tokyo, slavery relives via the remains invented of a "false archeology".
How to shape a past that has disappeared without leaving traces? How to draw a beauty from what has been so ugly, to give shape to slavery and the negation of the other in a human condition in black or white? Here we are on the island of Malaga, where the governor of Maine expels in 1912 the poor local populations of both races. No amalgam, anagram of Malaga and a term used to stigmatize racial mixtures (the exhibition is called Amalgam ).
Nice build, calm tiger, Theaster Gates , 45, has a powerful way to be heard.
In its wake, the wind of "Black Studies" breathes its new freedom and critical reflection. Suddenly, the American art scene teems with inspirational spokespersons, often painters like Henry Taylor, Kehinde Wiley , Mickalene Thomas and Amy Sherald.
For several seasons, the art market incenses Theaster Gates as the conceptual and cerebral king that was missing, so much this African-American hits the mark in a sentence or a sculpture.
What is the use of art if it is not enlightenment?
An artist specializing in social practices and a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, he creates here his vocabulary of reminiscences, his "Modern Institute of Fake Archeology".