Black Monks of Mississippi

Back in 2009, in the early days of our studio practice, we worked with artist Theaster Gates to create a screen printed poster for a series of performances by his Black Monks of Mississippi ensemble. We didn’t know Theaster, he’d found out about our tiny operation through word of mouth and entrusted us to help promote the performance. We can’t recall the project brief exactly, but he’d expressed the connection of the performance and his time spent in Japan.
 
In response, we created a series of ink drawings referencing traditional Japanese architecture, layering the loose brush work to form a totemic abstraction. Supported by plain-spoken typography, this poster captures a particular time in our practice, a quiet and heavy time triangulated by youthful determination in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.