{"id":57544,"date":"2019-02-11T01:14:47","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T01:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57544"},"modified":"2019-02-11T01:19:03","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T01:19:03","slug":"theaster-gates-on-how-his-new-show-was-inspired-by-the-eviction-of-45-people-from-an-island-in-maine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57544","title":{"rendered":"Theaster Gates on how his new show was inspired by the eviction of 45 people from an island in Maine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theaster Gates on how his new show was inspired by the eviction of 45 people from an island in Maine<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Art Newspaper<\/a>
\n2019-02-01<\/p>\n

Anna Swansom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Theaster<\/a>
\nTheaster Gates<\/a> \u00a9<\/sup>Theaster Gates; Photo: Julian Salinas<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The Chicago<\/a>-based artist’s exhibition in Paris<\/a> examines the forced removal in 1911 of the inhabitants of Malaga Island<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The US<\/a> artist Theaster Gates<\/a> has taken the eviction of a mixed-race community from a small island in Maine<\/a> as the starting point for his first solo exhibition<\/a> in France<\/a>, opening this month at the Palais de Tokyo<\/a>. In 1912, 45 people from Malaga Island<\/a> were evicted by the state authorities and eight of them were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded<\/a> following the state’s purchase of the island in 1911. The island, a poor fishing village of black, white and mixed-race people, was ridiculed in a Maine newspaper as a \u201cstrange community\u201d of \u201cpeculiar people\u201d; its eviction has recently been described by a US documentary<\/a> as having been motivated by economics, racism, eugenics<\/a> and political retribution.<\/p>\n

Through new works including sculptures, a film and a video, the Chicago<\/a>-based artist has developed the wide-ranging project and exhibition, Amalgam<\/a>, which explores the complexity of interraciality and migratory histories. The show has been organised by Katell Jaffr\u00e8s<\/a> and has received support from Regen Projects<\/a>, Richard Gray Gallery<\/a> and White Cube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Art Newspaper: How did you become interested in the history of Malaga Island and how did this lead to Amalgam<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Theaster Gates: I had started a residency in 2017 at Colby College in Maine and was visiting a friend who said there was this important, not well-known history about this island that used to have black and mixed-race people that were evicted. We were in a boat and he suggested having lobsters on the adjacent island before checking it out. So I learned of it quite leisurely and then started to do research.<\/p>\n

The idea of interracial mixing led to the creation of a sculptural form, \u201camalgam\u201d: a by-product of what happens when one artistic form from history meets another one to create a new kind of work. I wanted to create a bridge that would make people more curious about this island and for people who are of mixed race and from backgrounds where their parents are of different religions, I wanted Malaga to be a place where all mixes felt that they had a home. The beauty of mixing is one of the cornerstones of the exhibition…<\/p>\n

Read the interview article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chicago-based artist’s exhibition in Paris examines the forced removal in 1911 of the inhabitants of Malaga Island<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,459,13743,8,20],"tags":[29444,29443,29441,96,29445,2381,2379,29442,27534,17833,26196],"class_list":["post-57544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-europe","category-history","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-amalgam","tag-anna-swansom","tag-art-newspaper","tag-france","tag-katell-jaffres","tag-maine","tag-malaga-island","tag-palais-de-tokyo","tag-paris","tag-the-art-newspaper","tag-theaster-gates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57547,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57544\/revisions\/57547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}