Syreeta Gates Is Archiving The Culture One LEGO Brick At A Time
Building Black History Brick by Brick: Syreeta Gates’ LEGO Art Preserves Culture for Future Generations [Exclusive]
Syreeta Gates continues to lean on her superpower of being an archivist, using both her experience as a Black woman and her passion for preserving the culture as her kryptonite.
The multihyphenate creative is reconstructing culture as the founder of the Most Incredible Studio, established in 2018, trailblazing her way through celebrating cultural moments with LEGO-based art. Using bricks to create everything from sculptures to custom kits, minifigs, and beyond, the Most Incredible Studio operates from the manifesto that “every brick we place is a step toward immortalizing the essence of who we are and where we come from.” The studio’s philosophy is that “art should be a living dialogue with the past, present, and future.”
Playing with LEGO bricks didn’t start in Gates’ childhood; it was something that she discovered as an adult, and it continues to open up a world of possibilities.
“I got to LEGO by way of books,” Gates told MadameNoire. “I used to go to Barnes and Noble regularly, I’m a big romance novel girlie, so I would go to Barnes and Noble, and I realized by the staircase, I’m talking about this one particular [store] in Brooklyn, they had a LEGO Architecture collection set. My pops was an architect. I love buildings. I love the idea of our architecture and the team that it takes to put it all together.”
“So, I copped the set,” she continued. “I went home, literally had like a glass of wine, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is dope’. And then, because things can go from zero to one hundred, I ended up collecting the entire architecture collection set and building all of them. I got the opportunity to buy another set while I was purchasing these sets for my nephew. What we were able to do was essentially visit the sites that we would build. So, we would build the Empire State Building and then go to it. We would build the Statue of Liberty and put it on our list of things to visit. Then, it got to a point and I was like ‘Whoa, hold up, something’s missing here.’”
RELATED CONTENT: LEGO Vows To Make Non-Gender Conforming Products To Address ‘Gender Bias And Harmful Stereotypes’
As someone who’s immersed in a variety of industries, Gates expressed her gratitude for being able to touch areas in the culinary, film, and television spaces, and beyond, then using that as a sounding board for the work she does with Most Incredible to drive the culture forward.
“My commitment, I think, through the journey of my career so far, has been to create what’s missing,” Gates expressed. “I was like, LEGO is dope. I love the idea. I think it brings play and joy, and it’s a way to commune with people in a way that Black people are used to. And I was like, ‘Ah, something’s missing here.’ I want to bring culture to LEGO in a way that it’s never been possible. I think, obviously because I am a Black woman, first and foremost, I’m looking to myself to see what’s missing inside that space literally.”
She added, “I’m grateful that the people rock with it. I’m grateful that we’ve had amazing opportunities to work with a bunch of different brands that get it because of how innately we tell stories all the time. It’ll be like, ‘Alright, boom, so check this out, me and so and so went to…’ Being able to do that through a booklet, a box, and a LEGO set, I think, has brought me immense joy. I’m super grateful to be doing this work.”
Gates says that her work as an archivist “a trillion percent” informs her artistic process. Outside of being the founder of Most Incredible, the first Black woman to be featured on LEGO Masters, and just doing the overall work of producing culturally rooted content, Gates also holds a master’s degree in moving image archiving and preserving, something that is the result of wanting to ensure that her grandmother lives forever.
“My grandmother passed when I was 21 years old. She was born in 1926, and I wanted to figure out how I can ensure that she lasts forever, so that was kind of like one of three different stories that got me on this path of archiving,” Gates recalled. “Then, not only when I went to school, but when I saw what was missing in the archives, or not even missing in the archives, when I saw what was missing on the internet… We’re internet kids, we’re gonna go to Google first, but we don’t realize, oh, you want to know about Toni Morrison’s [The] Black Book? You gotta go to Princeton for that. You have to go to the archive. I fundamentally believe in the archives, in the acknowledgments in books, and in the credits in films.
“When I created Most Incredible Studio, it informed me that. I’m like, ‘Yo, how can we not necessarily create, say we’re working on a LEGO set with your favorite artist, we don’t want to create something that might add up to the eye in a very particular way. We want to dig deeper. We want to tell stories through LEGO and our packaging. When we do a collaboration or come up with our own sets, we’re like, ‘What is the story we want to tell? How do people interact with it? How can people learn from it?’ We know that through our work, we have the opportunity to tell some profound stories in a revolutionary way.”
Recently, Most Incredible Studio and Because of Them We Can collaborated on “Because of You: Legacy in Focus,” a celebration of Black storytelling that transforms the timeless art of photography into a LEGO masterpiece.
The kit features a camera and a photo frame that customers can build using LEGO bricks, “celebrating the power of storytelling and the enduring legacy of capturing Black creativity, history, and community through the lens of a camera.”
Like all the projects Gates pours her energy into, this one focuses on connecting with brands and people who are value-aligned.
“It made sense for us for the output to be a camera and a frame because when we thought about both brands, both are Black-owned brands, when we thought about the brands, that particular story resonated with us.”
She further explained, “My mom met my dad at a photography studio. My mother is a photographer. The first time I met Jamel Shabazz, I was 17, and I wanted to be a photographer. Jamel Shabazz, who is the GOAT, put me on game, you know what I’m saying? Because of Them We Can started with a photo campaign. It’s all of these young people reimagined as some of our greatest minds. Whether it’s Harriet Tubman or Quincy Jones, they’ve used photography to build a big brand that has stood the test of time over the years. When we thought about those stories, the product is cool, but when we thought about the stories we wanted to tell and the impact we wanted to make, and the people we wanted to get involved in the campaign, it was just like, this is a no-brainer. This is a story that’s an evergreen one to honor Black photographers and Black creatives in that way, so I was like, ‘Yes, sign me up twice on a Monday and five times on a Sunday.’ It was just value-aligned.”
As she looks ahead to future dream collaborations, Gates has one request—“We just want to work with people who are value-aligned and have a vision.”
In terms of the legacy that Syreeta Gates is building with Most Incredible Studio, the goal is to ultimately have someone discover the brand in their grandmother’s attic 100 years from now.
“Legacy looks like people, and not even just Black people, people, period, [who] can see our LEGO sets and identify with the stories that we told,” said Gates. “Legacy looks like having an opportunity for our work to bring joy to ourselves and other people. Legacy looks like creating a tangible archive of what we built at Most Incredible.”
RELATED CONTENT: #ToMaryWithLove: To Celebrate Mary J. Blige’s 50th Birthday, Professional Black Girl Has Launched A Website In Her Honor
