"Histories, energies, & resonances": Theaster Gates
St. Laurence bell
From the explanation, this bell was taken by Gates from the demolished St. Laurence Catholic Church in Chicago South Side. This church was formerly a refugee for Polish and Irish immigrants that became popular among the neighborhood's African-American community. He used materials such as bricks, roof stales, marble slabs and the so-called bell. With the surroundings of it, you can tell that it is related to the church, and as he manifest trough Black communities, with these pieces he's achieving the goal of the exhibition in which he creates a collective narrative of labor and spirituality.
Gates alliances with “animism or believe that it has life inside of it” this reflects his ambitions of how art can have an emotional connection with a space/object.
He’s able to take objects that had a function or identity and transform them into different things, without taking off the credit of its own meaning.
Thank you for your post.