Photograph from the archives of the Johnson Publishing Company. Courtesy of Theaster Gates.

Photograph from the archives of the Johnson Publishing Company. Courtesy of Theaster Gates.

Room 1

Theaster Gates

Curator : Daisy Desrosiers

The banner waves calmly

EXHIBITION /
JANUARY 10 TO FEBRUARY 16, 2019

OPENING /
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 8PM

CURATOR TALK /
SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 3PM

CONVERSATION BETWEEN DAISY DESROSIERS 
AND SKY GOODDEN / 
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 3PM

GUEST CURATOR : DAISY DESROSIERS

Looking at the legacy of Black images and the making of cultural moments through visual platforms, The Banner Waves Calmly unfolds as an iteration of Theaster Gates' ongoing relationship with archival material while unpacking the meaning of its production. Understanding the need to retrieve and care for archival material as much as making creative decisions about their use, the artist's practice makes a point of mediating the formation of narratives and the systemic confrontations of their survival. At the curatorial invitation of Centre CLARK, and as part of an exchange with the artist, this project by guest curator Daisy Desrosiers takes on the nomenclature of images and questions visibility. As part of the artist's process, which triggers the status of what is made visible, tangible and acknowledged, this image-based work is rooted in the belief that images are resilient in their capacity to (un)cover and yet be the document of new perspectives. Pursuing ongoing investigations around the performativity of material (such as advertising, as well as collections and archives) and their rendering in daily experiences, The Banner Waves Calmy is concerned with the politics of representation and racial constructions embedded in visual and popular cultures. 

- Daisy Desrosiers

 

 

THEASTER GATES
As a sculptor and urban planner by training, Gates’ practice investigates and aims to bridge the gulf between art and society by establishing cultural platforms as a way of initiating social, political, architectural, and urban change. Among the artist’s initiatives, Dorchester Projects began as an artistic endeavor on Chicago’s South Side which launched his ongoing interrogation of land, ownership, and varying formal trajectories of artistic engagement. Most recently his work was presented in solo exhibitions at Kuntsmuseum Basel, Sprengel Museum in Hannover, as well as Fondazione Prada in Milan. In 2018, he was awarded the Nasher Prize for Sculpture, as well as the Urban Land Institute’s J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.

DAISY DESROSIERS (curator)
An interdisciplinary art historian with a background in independent curatorial work, Daisy Desrosiers’ current research focuses on the cultural, post-colonial, and material implications of the use of sugar in contemporary art. She is the inaugural Director of Programs for the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College (Waterville, Maine, USA). From 2012 to 2017, Desrosiers was the director of Battat Contemporary (Montreal, Canada). In 2018 she was the inaugural recipient of the Nicholas Fox Weber curatorial fellowship, affiliated with the Glucksman Museum (Cork, Ireland) as well as a curatorial fellow-in-residence at Art in General (Brooklyn, NY) in partnership with Centre CLARK (Montreal, Canada).

For Daisy Desrosiers, reflecting on the archive and questions of representation through this work is a great honor, and presenting these results in Montreal makes it even more so. The curator would like to warmly thank the entire team at CLARK for its incredible trust and support⎯from Brooklyn to Montreal. She would also like to sincerely thank the artist for his generosity and enthusiasm toward this project. Special thanks are extended to peers who have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the reflections that emerged from this research : Megan Bradley, Sophie Jodoin, Jinn Lee, Joanie Lavoie, Sky Goodden, Felicia Lee, Judha Su, YuanYuan Yang, Lutz family as well as Calvin Reedy.