Chawan Cabinet exhibition by Theaster Gates

American artist Theaster Gates has transformed a dedicated Prada Home retail space in Milan into an earthen sanctuary for his exhibition Chawan Cabinet, dedicated to Japanese pottery. Opened for Milan design week, the exhibition brings together hundreds of vessels and objects sculpted by Gates along with a selection he has curated from friends and mentors in Japan, where he spent a formative year studying pottery in the 1990s. Gates made or selected everything from the floor to the wall treatment in the space, adding personal touches such as his own antique cabinet and a record player to unite the textures of analogue sound and hand-formed clay.

The chawan – or tea bowl, used in matcha and other tea ceremonies – is at the heart of the exhibition, along with yunomi (tea cups), guinomi (sake cups) and tokkuri (sake bottles). Dozens of Gates’ vessels fill the shelves of a weathered old apothecary cabinet, which the artist had shipped from his own studio. These are from his 1,000 tea bowl project dedicated to replication of form and experimentation with glaze, and show his interest in both everyday domesticity and objects that carry the weight of ritual and shared connection.

“Prada has allowed me to fully push my interest in domestic objects, retail strategies, branding campaigns and the ongoing creation of space to build what feels like the beginning of something very special,” said Gates, who has a longstanding relationship with the fashion brand. “This project has the ability to totally transform where the centre of my artistic practice lives,” he continued. “In a moment when my investment in the conceptual has to meet the truth of the complexities of the streets, I come back to the hand, the table, friendship and simple human kindness.” “Pots are about people, I want to focus on that,” he concluded.

As well as filling the apothecary cabinet, Gates’ pots and other objects, including hefty clay handbags, are exhibited more sparingly across a modular metal shelving system extending the full width of the other side of the room. Here, they mix with objects from the Japanese ceramicists Taira Kuroki, Yuichi Hirano, Shion Tabata and Koichi Ohara, while a pale green niche in the centre holds tableware from the Prada Home collection. The ceramic floor tiles were also developed by Gates, in collaboration with the ceramics manufacturer Mizuno Seitoen Lab, while the roughly textured walls are a raw, earthen plaster flecked with Japanese straw.

A long table made from reclaimed wood runs down the centre of the space and was meant to echo one in Gates’ Chicago studio, while a few large sculptural objects are placed solitarily around the space to serve as moments of calm and focus. One of these is a circular crackle-glazed sculpture suspended on the wall beside a vintage turntable, visually echoing the warm and grainy aural textures that soundtrack the space. Out back, a small courtyard was set up to host traditional Japanese tea ceremonies.

Gates’ previous projects with Prada have included the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab, a three-year incubator programme aimed at supporting Black designers. The artist has worked on an architectural scale with his 2022 Serpentine Pavilion in London, and is also collaborating with Asif Khan on a transformation of the Liverpool Docks in northern England.

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Theaster Gates