THEASTER GATES & GAGOSIAN PRESENT THE TRACE,
OPENING AT METROGRAPH NOVEMBER 16

“Film has long been a medium that has allowed me to understand how the world works. Filmmakers have become allies for our collective imagination and for the expansion of our understanding of visual literacy, political and emotional power, and cinematic possibility.

“This film series, The Trace, presented in tandem with my exhibition Young Lords and Their Traces at The New Museum, has offered me an opportunity to share a set of filmic relationships that, until now, were underexplored by me. These films live in different genres and across several decades.

“With the support of dear friends at the University of Chicago, we have conceived of a set of films that begin to lay out the origins of Russian engagement with black American labor movements and analogous cinematic projects. The series, in this sense, is a commentary on my exhibition and the history of the Soviet Project. Taking a strong cue from Russian and early black American cinema, the series creates connections between the American Anti-Imperialist League and the Jamaican Red Guards; the all-race conference and the American committee for the defense of Puerto Rican political prisoners; the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the Ku Klux Klan; the Confederation of Mexican Workers, anti- racist struggles in the British West Indies, labor movements in the Jim Crow South, and the ways in which black and Russian film cope, critique, and propagandize political struggle, complexion, white power and equality throughout the United States.

“Special thanks to Christina Kiaer, William Nickell and Leah Feldman for their tremendous contributions to my research and this film series. Thank you to my studio team for their unwavering support.”—Theaster Gates