Theaster Gates and Julie Mehretu at FRONT International 2022

Theaster Gates and Julie Mehretu are among the artists participating in FRONT International 2022, Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, which takes a poem by Langston Hughes as the starting point for an exercise in leaving lasting traces upon civic and cultural infrastructures. Mehretu’s participation foreshadows the unveiling of a mural she has been commissioned to paint on the biggest and most prominent blank wall in Cleveland, overlooking Public Square and Old Stone Church, which is set for completion by 2023.

 

Gates will present A Clay Sermon, a film in which Gates explores the spiritual and material legacies of clay while honoring clay's boundless potential. In 2019, Gates and his Rebuild Foundation, in partnership with Samaria Rice, constructed a material memorial at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago using the public gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was unjustly killed by a Cleveland policeman.