Theaster Gates, African Still Life #4, at White Cube Seoul
The artist assembles collected objects and handmade forms into a layered self portrait that speaks to the confluences of American, African and Asian ritual traditions. On view until December 2026.
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Theaster Gates arrived at the idea of ‘African Still Life #4’ through the people and objects that have shaped him: a gongshi, the scholar’s stone prized in Chinese aesthetics; an antique brass shoe shine stand worn smooth by years of labour; a memorial flag in cream, red and black; and a pair of custom Margiela Tabi roller skates, their split toes rendered in black leather with hot red wheels. These pieces sit together in White Cube Seoul, not as decoration but as evidence of how Gates moves between American, African and Asian ritual traditions, holding their differences without resolving them into a single narrative.
The work is a self portrait assembled from the materials of memory and curation. Gates chose the scholar’s stone for its centuries of aesthetic philosophy; the shoe shine stand for its record of labour and service; the memorial flag for collective loss and honour; the Margiela skates for their connection to Chicago’s Black roller skating culture, where Gates grew up. The Tabi boot, with its medieval Japanese origins as workwear, has long been Margiela’s meditation on utility and deconstruction. Gates’s version, designed in collaboration with the house, brings that Japanese lineage into direct conversation with the smooth floors of the rink and the vital social and creative tradition they represent. The pairing is ideological: it asserts that these two things belong to the same story he is telling about himself.
In still life painting, the inanimate has always spoken: about taste, wealth, mortality, time and the collector’s eye. Gates extends that language into something more personal and more political, where the objects that surround us become a way of mapping identity, heritage and the complex layering of cultural influence that makes us who we are. Each piece carries the weight not just of material presence but of preserved meaning and remembrance.
What makes the assembly a self portrait is precisely this act of curation. Gates chooses these objects because they reflect the identity of the individual who selects them, the layered inheritance of a person shaped by multiple traditions and the willingness to hold them together without resolving their differences. The brass shoe shine stand and the scholar’s stone do not naturalize one another; they coexist in the same space, the same composition, because they coexist in his thinking and his life.
The custom Margiela Tabi skates, designed by Gates in 2023, deserve particular attention. The Tabi boot, with its split toe, originated in medieval Japan as practical workwear; Margiela’s house has long engaged with the silhouette as a meditation on utility, deconstruction and the poetics of the everyday. Gates’s version brings that lineage into conversation with Chicago’s Black roller skating culture, a vital social and creative tradition with its own history of community, music and style. The pairing is not decorative; it is ideological. It asserts that the split toed Japanese boot and the smooth wheels of the rink belong to the same story he is telling.
The exhibition opens a conversation about what still life can hold in the twenty first century. The form has always been a space where the inanimate speaks: about taste, wealth, mortality, time and the collector’s eye. Gates extends that language into something more personal and more political, where the objects that surround us become a way of mapping identity, heritage and the complex layering of cultural influence that makes us who we are.
‘African Still Life #4’ is on view at White Cube Seoul until 18 December 2026.
Imagery courtesy of White Cube (@whitecube).
