Tomoo Hamada’s Residency at Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation

Theaster Gates and Rebuild will host Mashiko-based Japanese potter and ceramic artist Tomoo Hamada for their inaugural Mingei residency in Chicago. As part of the residency, Gates and Tomoo will present A Potter’s Film Screening, a public film programme and a Mingei Masterclass with Hamada San.

Mingei is a Japanese folk craft movement that emphasises the beauty of everyday objects made by unknown makers. Hamada is a major figure in the Mingei folk art movement in Japan and the grandson of Shoji Hamada, a pioneering ceramicist in the Mingei movement and co-founder of the Leach Pottery. Mingei has been a grounding philosophy in Gates’s artistic practice since he first studied ceramics in Tokoname, Japan, in 2004.

Demonstrating the power of the hand, generational craftsmanship, and skill and knowledge transference, Tomoo’s masterclass will inaugurate a future of experimental programming at Rebuild that celebrates craft as a central tenet of the organisation’s work.