Donté K. Hayes processes history through ceramics. His clay sculptures are informed by his research into traditional African heirlooms and initiation rites of birth, adulthood, marriage, eldership, and ancestry, together with his interest in science fiction and hip-hop culture. The resulting “modern artifacts” integrate disparate objects, images, and ideas to preserve, empower, and document the past and present to initiate healing and understanding for the future.
“The handling of clay reveals the process and shares the markings of its maker,” Hayes writes. “By using a needle tool, I create individual marks on the surface of the clay with each strand becoming a collective form. 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. The application of repeated texture and patterns on the surface of my sculptures imbues a visual language of memory, ritual, comfort, and a sense of familiarity to the viewer.”
Recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award in 2022, Hayes’ work is part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Des Moines Art Center and the Institute Museum of Ghana, among others. He is represented by Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, Florida.
A 2019 Ceramics Monthly magazine Emerging Artist and Artaxis Fellow, Hayes has been in residence at MacDowell, Bemis Center, Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Watershed Center for Ceramic. He is the Grand Prize winner of the “Coined in the South: 2022” exhibition at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C. and the 2019 winner of the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern art from the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C.
Hayes graduated summa cum laude from Kennesaw State University at Kennesaw, Georgia with a B.F.A. in Ceramics and Printmaking with an art history minor. Hayes received his M.A. and M.F.A. with honors from the University of Iowa, where he received the 2017 University of Iowa Arts Fellowship.
