March 27, 2023
Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago
"The Great Black Hole: A Long Poem on the Condition of Space Down Here"
Crafting a life practice that favors artmaking can be a challenge when the complexities of everyday life offer such demands for social impact. Part performance and part lecture, The Great Black Hole: A Long Poem on the Condition of Space Down Here will openly ponder the art/life dilemma. Using his most recent exhibition Young Lords and Their Traces at the New Museum and an open and empty lot on the arts block as prompts, Gates will explore questions around artistic agency, sculpture and form, and the role of administration within artistic practices to offer a state of the union address regarding his own development.
Theaster Gates is an artist and social innovator who lives and works in Chicago. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, he extends the role of the artist as an agent of change. Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and serves as the Special Advisor to the President for Arts Initiatives.
A DoVA Faculty Lecture