Singapore Art Week 2025: Theaster Gates says beauty is a choice to give care

American installation artist Theaster Gates will be delivering a keynote lecture at Singapore Art Week 2025. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THEASTER GATES STUDIO

Clement Yong

UPDATED Jan 08, 2025, 04:00 PM

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SINGAPORE – Midway through the 40-minute video call, American artist and professor Theaster Gates slows his voice and speaks in meditative tones: “You can now hear yourself walking. The tiles are making an impression on your feet. You smell things. You hear things faintly, which requires that you listen more.”

His intonations would fit on mindfulness channels, but he is describing the experience of one work at his 2024 solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum.

His sculptural installation A Heavenly Chord comprises a Hammond B-3 Organ – a staple in black churches – and seven Leslie speakers that stream gospel soul chants performed by Gates and collaborators The Black Monks.

It speaks to one of Gates’ biggest obsessions – a modern spirituality infused by but also divorced from traditional religion. This is underpinned by a belief in miracles, stemming from an unexpected source.