Edited and co-ordinated by Honey Luard  
Editorial assistance by Louisa Lee and Katherine Finerty 
Designed by Jonathan Hares and Jonas Berthod  
Texts by Bill Brown, Fred Moten and Jacqueline Terrassa 

Printed by Druckerei Odermatt AG, Switzerland 
216 × 292 mm, hardback 
172 pages, 107 colour and 11 black and white illustrations 
ISBN 978-1-906072-56-8 
Published by White Cube, October 2012 

A significant record of Theaster Gates’s practice and a prized collectible, My Labor Is My Protest was published on the occasion of the artist’s very first exhibition with White Cube at the Bermondsey gallery (September – November 2012). Developed in close collaboration with Gates, this monograph comprises five distinct chapters, each addressing one element of the artist’s multifaceted practice. Bound in a tar-black leather cover embossed with musical notations from the performance by Gates’s band, The Black Monks, during the run of the exhibition, the book provides a comprehensive account of the landmark exhibition, which investigated themes of race, history and social practice. 

Punctuating full-bleed details and individual representations of works are three essays, providing key contextual grounding into the artist’s practice. Bill Brown, Professor in American Culture at the University of Chicago, contributes a text entitled ‘Redemptive Reification (Theaster Gates, Gathering)’, centring on the rallying of communities synonymous with Gates’s collaborative work. Poet and philosopher Fred Moten’s essay ‘Nowhere, everywhere’ pays poetic homage to Gates’s critical artistic practice, whilst Jacqueline Terrassa’s ‘Finding Form’ offers a more personal retelling of Gates’s development, attuned to the interrelation of the artist’s process to his embedded ethics of social engagement.

Bill Brown is the Karla Scherer Distinguished Professor in American Culture at the University of Chicago.

Fred Moten is Professor in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Jacqueline Terrassa is the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.