About

Gates’ collections constitute an encyclopaedia of the Black experience, predominantly from the perspective of the white imagination, as can be seen through the lens of the Edward J. Williams collection of ‘negrobilia’. At the same time, they provide the means to examine Black cultural production over the past seventy years. Forming a critical part of his larger artistic intention - namely, to exhume and make visible the power of Black consciousness - Gates introduces, wherever possible, the visual tropes of the Western art canon. Through an engagement with this rich archive, the works in …