Phileas | Theaster Gates in conversation with Hamza Walker | KUB, Bregenz | 23rd April, 2016

One day after the opening of Theaster Gate’s first solo exhibition in Austria the artist set down for a conversation with Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator at The Renaissance Society in Chicago and co-curator of Made in L.A. 2016. Together they explored the role of Theaster’s exhibition Black Archive within the context of his artistic approach, recognizing art and creativity as instrument to develop social environments and change the understanding of their histories.

Theaster Gates was born in 1973 in Chicago, where he lives and works. He has exhibited widely, including the Whitney Biennial, New York, dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Whitechapel, London, and the 56th Venice Biennale. Solo exhibitions include Milwaukee Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Museu Serralves, Porto. Gates was awarded the inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics in 2013, and the Artes Mundi 6 prize in 2015. He is the founder of the non-profit Rebuild Foundation and Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.

Hamza Walker was born in New York in 1966 and is now based in Chicago where he acts as Director of Education and Associate Curator at The Renaissance Society. Curated exhibitions include Teen Paranormal Romance (2014), Suicide Narcissus (2013), John Neff (2013), and Black Is, Black Ain’t (2008) which explored a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a moment where racial identity was being simultaneously rejected and retained. Recently he has been announced curator of the Hammer Museum’s forthcoming biennial ‘Made in L.A. 2016.’

Walker is the recipient for the 1999 Norton Curatorial Grant, the 2004 Walter Hopps Award, and was also awarded the 2010 Ordway Prize by the New Museum. He has contributed reviews and art criticism to New Art Examiner, Art Muscle, Dialogue, Parkett, and Artforum, in addition to numerous catalogue essays on artists ranging from Giovanni Anselmo and Darren Almond to Thomas Hirschhorn and Heimo Zobering.