Donté K. Hayes
Cliffwood, New Jersey
Website
www.dontekhayes.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I would describe my work in terms of creating, “future artifacts.” These abstract sculptural artifacts preserve, empower, and document the past and present to initiate healing and understanding for the future. I utilize ceramics as a historical and base material to inform memories of the past. The handling of clay reveals the process and shares the markings of its maker. I compare the construction and deconstruction of materials to the remix in rap music and how human beings adapt to different environments and reinvent new identities. Ceramics becomes a bridge to conceptually integrate disparate objects and or images for the purpose of creating new understandings and connections with the material, history, and social-political issues. The application of repeated texture and patterns on the surface of my sculptures imbue a visual language of memory, ritual, comfort and a sense of familiarity to the viewer. These sculptures are vessels that are turned upside down further symbolizing the crazy world we live in.
What inspires you?
As human beings we are not guaranteed each day. So, what inspires me is getting up each day and receiving the blessing of just living the ups and downs, the good times and bad times in the journey of life. May it be reading, listening to music, cooking, watching sports or spending time walking in the woods with my wife. I want to live a life of sharing myself with love, compassion and an appreciative and forgiving heart. It is inspiring to be in tune with other people, animals and the environment while having confidence in yourself without the feeling of needing to receive approval. Through taking life’s journey as inspiration, my artwork speaks to the foundation of being human.
Can you speak about your process?
I research nine months out of the year and only create physical work for three months. I am a research-based artist working in abstraction to initiate the viewer to see the artwork on their own terms. Research for me comes in many varieties. It could be from going on a vacation, reading a book, having an interesting conversation, spending time vegetating on trashy television or just resting. To make authentic art you must have an authentic life. I don’t want to miss life by being in the studio every day. With that said, when I am in the studio, I put in that work. I usually start in the studio at 2 am and end creating between 5 pm and 6 pm. I then take a shower, eat and go to bed by 8 pm to get up at 2 am to do this entire cycle again. So, I work about 15 to 16 hours straight in the studio a day during this time. I work uninterrupted, only listening to hip hop music or to a movie I have seen many times with no breaks, for food, rest, drinks, or even going to the bathroom. The process of making one mark at a time on each sculpture is very repetitive and relaxing. Time slows down and I can travel through time and space, letting the material speak without feeling tired, hungry or having the need to go to the bathroom. Working in the studio in this way focuses each object to be imbued with meaning, history and beauty to encourage the viewer in seeing black thought and intellect as important, meaningful and to be respected.
To create my sculptures, I use my interest in science-fiction and hip-hop culture with researching traditional West African objects and ceramic vessels along with the history and culture of the greater African Diaspora. Traditional African art is not art but heirlooms passed down through the family for rituals and initiation rites to keep the family, community, society and humanity in order. These ceramic sculptures are created with black or brown clay bodies using a hand building technique of making coils of clay and stacking them to create forms. Once the form is made I smooth out all of the coils to unify. Then I use a needle tool to mark lines into the clay. Similar to making marks with an etching tool in printmaking on a metal plate. The work is completely hollow at the bottom. An upside-down vessel. When describing the material, black clay body or brown clay body is the ceramic definition of describing the clay due to its material compound. All clay has a chemical composition which is its clay body. I am playing with the terminology of creating clay bodies to speak to material as content. I communicate the abstract idea of the internal and external body through the visual language of the BBC sci-fi television show Dr. Who, and its antagonist characters the Dalek. A fictional extraterrestrial race which are bent on exterminating all races which they deem inferior throughout time and space. The Dalek outer appearance is constructed as a robot body with its lower half being of bulbous shapes. From this idea, I connect visually and conceptually the futuristic character of the Dalek to the stress ball. When a stress ball is squeezed it creates bulbous shapes through the hands of the holder which look similar to the outer form of a Dalek. Unlike the Dalek whose main purpose of existence is to exterminate other races and species, the stress ball is used to help relax the body and mind when people are going through stressful situations. I use the Dalek and stress ball to explain how black people move through space and time with strength, dignity and hope despite their circumstance. I also employ the visual language of Lego bricks and specifically the Lego bumps on the top of the bricks which are called Lego studs. I use this in my work to reference how black people are like architects building new environments and spaces to thrive. How does a person think, feel and navigate forward as a human being internally? What worlds are manifested in the mind that can be created tangibly in the present?
How did you become interested in art?
I became interested in art from having a form of dyslexia and struggling with reading. My parents noticed that I loved to watch cartoons and I would try to draw my favorite cartoon character’s while watching the program. My parents encouraged me to learn to enjoy reading through reading comic books and graphic novels. Comic books helped improve my reading and comprehension but also taught me to dream big and view the world around me with understanding and empathy for others.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
My parents seeing my talent and passion for drawing and making art, they encouraged my artistic curiosity through exposing me to museums and art galleries at eight years old. The first museum, I visited was the Baltimore Museum of Art. This is when I discovered and manifested for myself what it means to be an artist through viewing the prints and sculptures of my favorite artist and hero Elizabeth Catlett. Seeing her work changed my life. I wanted to be an artist that created art that meant something and spoke the truth. Art can be beautiful and uplift by taking risk and being vulnerable which is a true strength of being human, overcoming and being a vessel for knowledge and healing to others.
Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?
I want this to be clear. My work is not about belonging. Black people are human, so we already belong. I want the viewer to see black life in its entirety and not a means to only hold trauma, work, commodity, exploitation or black joy. These future artifacts are objects to conjure a spiritual awakening of welcoming oneself to create a better future for all of humanity.
