Marc Straus Gallery has announced the representation of Washington, D.C.-based artist Shaunté Gates (b. 1979), joining other artists on the roster including Renée Stout, Anne Samat, and Marie Watt.
The announcement follows on the heels of Gates’ participation in the Smithsonian Institution’s Men of Change four-year traveling exhibition spanning ten museums, including the International African American Museum in Charleston, SC; California African American Museum; Cincinnati Underground Railroad Museum; and Washington State History Museum (2019–23).
Gates has been awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Grant (2022) and residencies with The Nicholson Project (2023), The Kennedy Center (2019) and Washington Project for the Arts (2018; 2017).
Marc Straus Gallery will stage their first exhibition with Gates as a represented artist in January 2026.
About the artist
Shaunté Gates is a Washington, D.C.-based artist, born and raised in the city. His work spans mixed media collage and video, subverting landscapes with architecture embedded with cultural symbolism and social hierarchies. His collages have evolved from canvas to wood, allowing for intricate layering of fabrics, paper, coins, photographs, and other materials. By incorporating found objects, Gates infuses his work with the energy and cultural significance of their origins, drawing connections to popular culture and history.
He refers to these landscapes as the “Land of Myth,” embedding mythologies within his materials to create dreamlike compositions rich with cinematic moments of beauty, chaos, and transcendence. His work explores psychogeography—the intersection of psychology and geography—illuminating forgotten, discarded, or marginalized aspects of urban life.
Growing up in public housing during the “war on drugs,” Gates witnessed firsthand how social constructs shape imagination and reality. His figures, often drawn from family and friends, are transformed into hybrid mythological beings—simultaneously ancient and futuristic—examining themes of duality, religion, introspection, and escapism.
Trained in oil painting, Gates initially focused on representational portraiture before expanding into his current mixed-media practice. His background as a tattoo artist and television editor at BET Networks informs his approach to storytelling and composition. He was a featured artist in the Smithsonian Institution’s “Men of Change” traveling exhibition (2019–2022), which toured ten museums, including the California African American Museum, the Cincinnati Underground Railroad Museum, and the Washington State History Museum.
Gates’ work is held in esteemed private collections and has been acquired by the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has also completed numerous public art commissions throughout D.C., including Transcending, a painting commemorating the 140th anniversary of Howard University School of Law.
