In his wide-ranging artistic practice, Theaster Gates often uses salvaged and recycled materials to create spaces for people to gather, take shelter, or reflect.

The artist’s studio in Chicago’s South Shore is located a few blocks from the former Saint Laurence Church, which was an architectural beacon in the neighborhood for more than a century.

Despite considerable preservation efforts, the church was demolished in 2014. Gates collected an array of objects and materials from the building.

In the partially dismantled church, scraps became instruments during Gates’s performance with his ensemble, the Black Monks of Mississippi.

One of the objects salvaged from the church was a human-size stone statue of Saint Laurence (225–258 CE). A venerated Roman martyr, he is the patron saint of librarians and archivists.

Traveling through Europe, Gates presented the statue in different geographies and contexts, revealing new meanings in each location.

The artist included the statue in his installation Martyr Construction for the 2015 Venice Biennale.

The exhibition questioned the demolition of churches in African American and Hispanic neighborhoods across the United States.

The statue made its next appearance at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, where Gates presented his exhibition Black Archive.

The statue found its permanent home in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden within a temple built by Gates from custom-made black bricks.

Gates reverently altered the statue by blackening and protecting its surface with a coating of tar.

Amid this harmony of salvaged things, with light filtering down from the open ceiling above, the statue reveals its redemptive essence.