Theaster Gates at the Shanghai Biennale

Theaster Gates presents two interventions at the 15th Shanghai Biennale, titled Composite Meditation (2025) and Tea Storage (2025).

Drawing on over two decades of engagement with Japan’s ceramic traditions, including time spent in Tokoname, a small town in the southern central region of Japan, Composite Meditation reflects on the cultural and spiritual exchanges between Japan and China, and Gates’s own Black experience in the US. Made of wood-fired stoneware, leather and brick, the work considers clay as a vessel of shared histories and transformation.

Tea Storage is a library featuring a curated selection of books shaped by Gates’s ongoing interest in what he terms Afro Mingei, which aims to merge the history and cultural contributions of Black Americans with the Japanese Mingei movement’s reverence for vernacular beauty, utility and care.

The 15th Biennale features over 250 works by 67 artists and collectives. Titled ‘Does the flower hear the bee?’, it explores the intersection of human and ‘more-than-human’ intelligence, reflecting on the shared consciousness that connects all living forms.

The Shanghai Biennale coincides with West Bund and Shanghai Art Week, and Gates’s will be on view at the Jia Yuan Hai Art Museum.