In the closing plenary of the Arts Midwest/Western Arts Alliance conference, Arts Midwest CEO Torrie Allen spoke to Theaster Gates about a number of topics. What caught my attention was Gates’ fabrication of the Yamaguchi Institute. You may have heard this story already. Gates claimed that his ceramics mentor was a Japanese immigrant, Shoji Yamaguchi, that moved to Mississippi in search of a fabled “black clay” with which to make his pottery. Yamguchi marries a black civil rights activist and begins teaching black people how to make pottery in the Japanese tradition..
The whole thing was a fiction created by Gates but bolstered by Gates hiring an actor to play Yamaguchi’s son during a showing of Yamaguchi/Gates work. Gates admitted the truth of things some years ago, but in his discussion with Allen a couple weeks ago, added some nuance.
Gates in fact had traveled to Japan and studied how the Japanese made their ceramics. He says people in Japan felt he was a hard worker, but was pretty bad at making pottery. Finally one of the masters notes Gates is trying so hard to make a Japanese tea bowl and failing, perhaps he should try making a Mississippi tea bowl. Gates said that made him recognize that “maybe there is something worth mining in my own history.”
Yamaguchi was Gates attempt to create a context that connects his cultural roots with that of the Japanese craft. He says that he created a Yamaguchi as “a way of…creating an imaginary and psychic value for the history of where my people are from.” Gates said in the process of making up Yamguchi and the discipline he embodied, he decided to adhere to the Yamaguchi way and his pottery improved. “I actually became a better potter because Yamaguchi showed me the way.”
Gates says this type of myth making helps to create hope when it feels like so many forces are moving against you. He also said inventing Yamaguchi filled a vacuum of leadership in his life.
Gates also talks about how the Yamaguchi Institute hosted dinners where people from the community could have conversations and exchange ideas to create relationships across economic and racial lines. It sounds like there was a good chance it was a predecessor of the On The Table movement that originated in Chicago and spread across the nation to other communities.
This is a really fascinating story because essentially Gates created a fiction through which to focus his own self-discipline and provide himself with hope and guidance.