Presented by White Cube

Theaster Gates’ film ‘Oh, The Wind’ evokes the Black sermon and Baptist hymnody as a way of connecting Black religious music traditions to the history of ceramics. It was filmed in an abandoned conveyance structure for a brick manufacturing company – a site of intense ceramic production for over 50-years and now part of the Archie Bray Foundation.

Standing in the building’s cloistered space, the artist sings an improvised hymn, musing on water, wind and fire, to an invisible congregation. Poetically reinvesting the abandoned building with a powerful, living presence, the film connects the theme of nature in Chinese poetry and Buddhist thought with the Black sermon.

The film features footage from the artist’s time in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana. In it, the artist is pictured in a floor-length wool coat, with a mustard yellow hat, walking up and down a long wooden floor.