Artist Talk: Hugh Hayden

Coinciding with the opening of his Nasher exhibition 'Homecoming," Hugh Hayden discussed his all-new artwork and the reoccurring themes present in 'Homecoming' in conversation with Nasher Curator Leigh Arnold.

00:00 Welcome from Anna Smith, Curator of Education at the Nasher
03:17 Conversation
1:19:16 Q&A from the audience

Best known for his work in the traditions of wood carving and carpentry, Dallas-born, New York-based artist Hugh Hayden builds sculptures and installations that explore the idea of the “American Dream.” Reconstructing familiar things like Adirondack chairs, household furniture, or basketball hoops using wood and other materials, Hayden transforms these signifiers of leisure, family, and athletics into surreal and somewhat sinister objects. Many of his vernacular sculptures are covered in hand-carved thorns or unwieldy branches that imply pain or difficulty to those who try to inhabit them—a metaphor for the fraught pursuit of achievement and status. In other works, Hayden leaves readymade objects intact, only to cover them in tree bark, ultimately concealing recognizable status symbols. Likening bark to both armor and camouflage, Hayden uses it to show how clothing can be similarly deployed as a shield against racial prejudice or as a way of blending in or passing.

For his exhibit at the Nasher, Hayden mined the memories of his upbringing in Dallas to create new sculptures that revel in themes of nostalgia, childhood, education, and religion. While these motifs reoccur throughout much of Hayden’s work, sculptures like Brush — a boar-hair-covered play- ground at the center of the gallery— and the bark-covered football uniform in the installation titled Blending In nearby, have personal resonance for the artist. They refer to Hayden’s own memories of the beloved “Kidsville” playground in the Dallas suburb of Duncanville and the years he played football at Jesuit High School. Despite the specificity of these works and others in the exhibition, they are likewise universally recognizable symbols of youth in the collective memory of Hayden’s generation. The style of playground equipment that Brush embodies—made entirely of wood and evocative of treehouses or Medieval forts—was common in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, before it was replaced by the industrially fabricated metal and plastic equipment that characterizes most playgrounds today. The pencil-covered kitchen table and chairs titled Supper recalls a dining set that was ubiquitous in suburban kitchens in the 1990s, while the Ikea loveseat, here serving as a pedestal for the display of Hayden’s reclining tool skeleton Laure, could be found in most college dorm rooms in the early 2000s. In each instance, he alters these commonplace objects in ways that complicate and subvert their utility and meaning. Through his uncanny sculptures, Hayden shows us the strangeness in the ordinary and articulates his experience of growing up Black in the American South.

Learn more: https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org...