From Chicago to Frieze London 2025: The Story of Theaster Gates' Sanctuary Sounding Board
Theaster Gates's Sanctuary Sounding Board, seen here in an exhibition setting. The work stands as a quiet requiem, a composition of weathered wood that seems to absorb the noise around it, transforming the gallery into a space for memory and contemplation.
To walk the aisles of Frieze London 2025 is to submit to a particular kind of sensory assault. It is a cathedral of commerce, a polished labyrinth of the perpetually new where conversations are transactions and value is measured in decibels of hype. Every October, Regent’s Park becomes the vibrant epicenter of the global art scene, an amazing artistic wonderland drawing collectors and critics from every corner of the world. Yet amidst this clamor, this "graveyard of creativity for tasteless one percenters" as one critic has called such fairs, the air can feel thin, stripped of the oxygen of deeper meaning. It is here, within the pristine confines of the White Cube gallery booth, that one encounters an object of profound and defiant silence: Theaster Gates Sanctuary Sounding Board.
This large, wall-mounted sculpture does not shout for attention. It stands as a quiet requiem, a composition of weathered wood and muted brass that seems to absorb the noise around it. It feels less like a product and more like a relic, a fragment of a forgotten truth. In a marketplace that worships novelty and flawless surfaces, what is the value of an object built from the spirit of a place that is gone? This work by Theaster Gates, one of the most significant black artists of his generation, poses this question not as a critique from the outside, but as a sacred intervention from within. It asks us to listen not with our ears, but with our memory.
The Archaeology of Materials: From a Church in Chicago
While Sanctuary Sounding Board uses materials from a church, this piece, American Flag Study (2019), demonstrates the same artistic principle. Here, Gates uses another material dense with history—decommissioned fire hoses—to imbue the work with the memory of civic struggle and resilience, transforming it into a sacred text.
The immense power of Theaster Gates Sanctuary Sounding Board emanates from its material DNA. This is not an object born of a sterile studio, but one resurrected from the demolition of a church on Chicago’s South Side—the artist’s native ground and the locus of his life’s work. For generations, these churches were the most important institutions in their neighborhoods, monuments to devotion that maintained cultural traditions and served as centers of community life. Gates’s celebrated social practice art is rooted in this act of redemption, of finding the "life within things" and redeeming spaces that have been left behind. The sculpture is composed of two primary elements, each an artifact dense with meaning.
The first is the reclaimed materials sculpture’s wooden floorboards. These planks are not mere timber; they are the literal foundation upon which a community stood, prayed, sang, and mourned. They are a material archive of footsteps, a silent witness to generations of lived experience. Gates’s approach to preservation is not about pristine restoration but about honoring the "patina of age" and revealing "layers of history". The scuffs, scratches, and wear on the wood are not imperfections; they are inscriptions of devotion, transforming the material into a sacred text. They carry the weight of a place that, like so many Black spaces, was deemed disposable.
The second, and perhaps more poignant, element is the array of organ pipes embedded within the wooden structure. They are the silenced voice of the church, the vessels that once transformed breath into the sound of worship. This resonates deeply with Gates’s own history, which is steeped in the music of the Black church and his work with his experimental choir, the Black Monks. The Hammond organ, a staple in Black churches, became a symbol of spiritual transference and cultural expression. In other works like A Heavenly Chord, Gates places the instrument itself at the center of the gallery, a ready-made sculpture waiting to be activated. Here, in Sanctuary, only the pipes remain—relics of a sound that once held "joy, temporality, memory and contingency". The title, Sounding Board, thus becomes a beautiful paradox. This is a board that no longer sounds in the literal sense, but now resonates metaphorically with the memory of that sound, broadcasting a history from the gallery walls.
Devotion as Labor: The Artist as Steward
Theaster Gates, whose background as a potter informs his entire practice. His labor is a form of spiritual stewardship, treating discarded materials with a "generative care" that elevates them from debris into relics. He is not just a sculptor but a "keeper of objects," stewarding an archive for a community’s soul.
To understand this work is to understand the artist’s labor not as a simple act of fabrication, but as a form of spiritual stewardship. Theaster Gates’s background as a potter, a craft he studied for 15 years, is foundational to his entire practice. As a potter, he learned "how to make great things out of nothing," to shape the world from humble, muddy clay. This philosophy is manifest in his handling of the church’s remains. The act of salvaging, cleaning, and reassembling these discarded materials is a redemptive, almost priestly act. It is the ultimate expression of Devotion and Material Care.
This process is what Gates calls "generative care"—tending to the past by carrying its lessons into the future. It is an ethos informed by his studies in religion and his deep engagement with Japanese craft philosophy, which honors the "spirit within things". His labor anoints these objects, elevating them from debris into relics. This re-centers the physical, devotional act of making as the primary source of an object's meaning, connecting contemporary art back to ancient traditions of sacred craft. He is not just creating a sculpture; he is a "keeper of objects," stewarding an archive for a community’s soul. Much like his celebrated work preserving the archives of Johnson Publishing (Ebony and Jet magazines) at his Stony Island Arts Bank, this work makes "the ephemeral sociability of the black metropolis visible and concrete". Sanctuary (Sounding Board) is not a representation of a church; it is the church, distilled into its essential material memory.
A Post-Luxury Sanctuary: Value Measured in Memory
In his TED Talk, Theaster Gates discusses how he uses art and community development to revive neighborhoods. This approach exemplifies his "recirculation of art world capital", where the value generated by his art supports projects like the Stony Island Arts Bank, transforming urban spaces into "vessels of opportunity" for the community.
In the context of Frieze London 2025, an event defined by blue-chip commodities and high-profile sales, Theaster Gates’s work offers a radical redefinition of value. It is the epitome of a Post-Luxury object: an item whose immense worth derives not from precious materials or brand recognition, but from its priceless, embedded history and the authenticity of its narrative. It is a luxury defined by the soul it carries. This stands in stark contrast to the traditional luxury paradigm that dominates the art fair, where value is often tethered to material opulence, flawless new surfaces, and the name on the booth. Sanctuary proposes a different logic. Its materials are not rare metals but discarded wood; its surface is not polished but patinated with life; its artist is not merely a creator of new forms but a steward of collective memory.
This leads to the most sophisticated dimension of Gates’s practice. The sale of Theaster Gates Sanctuary Sounding Board is not the end of its story but a crucial part of its function. The artwork acts as a "bond" or "investment," part of a "virtuous circle between fine art and social progress". Gates is known for his "recirculation of art world capital," converting the symbolic value of his art into real financial capital for his Rebuild Foundation, which funds cultural and art and community regeneration projects in Chicago. He transforms the "raw material of urban neighborhoods into radically re-imagined vessels of opportunity for the community". Therefore, to acquire this work is not an act of consumption but of participation in a cycle of resurrection. It is a monetization of memory not for private profit, but for public preservation. The collector becomes a participant in the artist's social practice, ensuring that the spirit of the demolished church continues to build and sustain its community.
The Sound of What Remains
Theaster Gates Sanctuary Sounding Board is more than a sculpture. It is a theological object, a social tool, and an act of material resurrection. Presented by the White Cube gallery, it stands as definitive proof that the most powerful "Objects of Affection" are those that carry the stories of a life lived. It is a "radically reimagined vessel of opportunity" that embodies the principle of Life as Art.
The title suggests it still resonates. What is the sound of what remains? It is not the music of organ pipes, but the resonant echo of a community's history, the quiet hum of devotional labor, and the clear signal of a new, more meaningful way to think about art and value. It is the sound of hope, broadcasting a question from the gallery walls: What have we lost, what must we save, and how can art be our sanctuary? In the quiet presence of this work, we find a profound answer.
