A conversation with Theaster Gates for ApartamentoTV’s Sneak Peek

The project that I’ve done with Prada is called Chawan Cabinet, and the brief was very simple—to help Prada think about the philosophies and ideologies that govern how we think about domestic life and domestic things. Rather than starting with a cup or a bowl, I decided to start with Japanese philosophy, Japanese architecture. I asked friends of mine if they could help me think through tea ceremony, through incense ceremony, through private discourse, asking ‘How do you guys think about home?’ 

Because my training is in Japanese ceramics, I was able to bring these aesthetic intentions to the space and—working with a really great architect, Seiichiro Takeuchi—we were able to conceive of this unbelievable space.

I wanted to introduce a body of work that represented and reflected my 22-year-long relationship with the town Tokoname. Then I wanted to think about how that relationship with Tokoname could connect to my relationship with Miuccia, and the ways in which those relationships together might make some new beautiful objects.

A couple things started to happen as we assembled. What should be on the shelves in the space? I thought we should have a combination of objects that represent precision and maybe even manufacturing—a manufactured good still touched by the hand but with a kind of industrial touch, hence we introduced objects that are made in both Japan and Germany. Then we would have a set of objects that were technically excellent but absolutely made by hand. So you have examples of oribe, which is a kind of green glaze complemented by very intense inlay and design, made by my dear friend Shion Tabata—the work is beautiful. Then there’s work by another friend, Taira Kuroki—a sake vessel and these pouring glasses. This sake vessel has to be the lightest white stoneware I’ve ever touched in my life—it feels like you’re not holding anything.

We wanted to then complement that with my favourite works which are Mingei-style works. These works are intentionally a little bit heavier, seemingly more provincial—maybe slightly bigger than they need to be—but the hope is that these are objects that were made by everyday people with no real pretence for ceremony or decoration. In some cases, they’re simply making a totally functional thing, and the aesthetic intention is secondary to its function. The fact that there’s beauty is not to say that there’s no consciousness of it, but that there’s no self-consciousness of it. Whatever the outcome is, it’s a byproduct of just needing something to drink out of or eat on. 

I love that balance between an intentional display of ornamentation and then an intentional refusal of ornamentation. What happens if you put these things on the same shelf? I think it’s a much more exciting shelf if you have a manufactured object next to something that looks like a rock but is actually used to hold a scoop or a spoon.

In this way, it gives us a chance to examine what feels good on a table, what feels good in a room. And I like that very much.

One of the real challenges that we had was to figure out how to label things. If we only made 50 tea bowls, we wanted to find a way to tell people that we only had 50. The word ‘edition’ is used because we were stumbling between the language of a gift culture that I have at my studio and that of a retail project which will ultimately pay for the creation of this space.

That tension is one that I’m not running away from—I’m kind of leaning into it. If the retail team says, ‘How many of these are we selling?’, the answer is not ‘an unlimited number’. They want to know when they’re at 37 because there’s only 13 left.

In that sense, phrases like ‘this is a single artistic object’ or ‘this is one-of-five’ or ‘we don’t have the ability to make this thing because this kiln no longer exists’ give clues to the fact that something is not infinitely reproducible. There might be some things that are seemingly more reproducible, but I love that I could only make as many as I could make before the start date.

Value is a very interesting question because, in some ways, it is not necessarily about the singular object. I could only make one of these, therefore it’s more expensive than the thing that we could make thousands of.

For me, the question is a question of aesthetic intention, of the ideological framework and the set of conditions that help to make an object important. If Rolex could only produce a thousand watches in a year, do those watches have less value than if they only produced one? 

The people who I love in Japan, like Raku Kichizaemon XVI, can only make 40 to 60 great pots per year. That is a very small number of pots considering Raku is one of the most important living treasures of our world. But Raku is actively experimenting. He’s trying to learn as much as he can because certain knowledge wasn’t passed down from his father—he had to learn that knowledge on his own from the best primordial fodder in the world. When the opportunity for a Raku bowl is made available, it’s important because Raku is a 17th generation bowl-maker, and the 40 bowls that he can make come from possibly a thousand bowls that he made that were not up to snuff. 

I’m also asking myself, ‘What does it mean to have special things live inside a retailer that is used to scaling? Is it possible that this project is suggesting to a retailer like Prada that maybe scaling isn’t everything, maybe there’s some value in the fact that only 50 can be made, and you don’t want more than 50?’ That became a niche position that we protected instead of trying to find a way to make this glorious tea bowl as replicable as possible.

Yes! The question is not whether or not 50,000 tea bowls could be made. The question is, do we want 50,000 of these tea bowls to be made? That is the ideological challenge when talking to a programme like Prada’s, and that debate is a very exciting one for Prada home.

When I was a younger artist, the part of the creative process that gave me the most joy was the kind of physicality of it. I was really excited about ideas because once I had them I could then get to the making, which was always the most important part. 

Now I want to shut myself into a hut and spend most of my time thinking through ideas because, if I can get to the best ideas, the making part is a byproduct of them. In my life I meander between the most exciting part being the thinking, to leading a team and being a team builder, to the actual sweat necessary to do a thing. With a project like Prada Home, it was a combination of all three. First I had to determine an ideological location for what we would do because there are 50 partners from the internal retail team at Prada, four Japanese potters to whom I’m trying to help explain why we’re working in an Italian venue like Salone, and my own sense of why an object makes sense within this context or not. Should I bring a work of art alongside these other objects? The work of quieting my spirit, thinking long and hard about an ideological position, and then saying, ‘These are the ways that our table should look, that our incense should smell, that our tea should be made, that the tea bowl should be represented, that the relationship between the machined artefact and the handmade artefact should hold a certain kind of tension’—that has been really fulfilling. The project has been a thinking and making project.