Theaster Gates turns discarded objects into art

IN 2012 THEASTER GATES shipped a cargo of construction materials from a dilapidated house on the South Side of Chicago to the German city of Kassel. He had been invited to exhibit at Documenta, a city-wide art show held there every five years. In Kassel Mr Gates had come upon Huguenot House, a run-down hotel built by migrants and named after the French Protestants who fled abroad in the 17th and 18th centuries. Once people had sought refuge in the building’s cellar, but it had been abandoned since the second world war. He was fascinated by parallels between the Huguenots who made a new home in Germany and the African-Americans who travelled north to Chicago during the great migration of the mid-20th century. He asked to take over the whole building.