Beyond Artifacts
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present Beyond Artifacts, the second solo exhibition of his work in Miami. This presentation is a continuation of Hayes’ ongoing series that examines the medium of clay as a language of history, identity, and futurity. Expanding on his 2022 solo exhibition Future Artifacts, this new chapter deepens his inquiry into how material and form can embody transformation, resilience, and ancestral knowledge.
“My ceramic sculptures function as ‘future artifacts’ that remix ancestral traditions, respond to contemporary realities, and envisions resilient futures. Influenced by hip hop culture and science fiction, I use clay as both material and metaphor, building forms that I inscribe with thousands of etched lines made by a needle tool. These marks accumulate into patterns that echo hair, raffia, scars, rituals, and inscriptions. Texture becomes a conduit to archive memory, offering new understandings of how time and repetition can be recorded in material form.
I work with black and brown clays to reflect how the African Diaspora moves through time and space while affirming the beauty of Blackness. In African and other Eastern cultures, black is understood as the color of knowledge, standing in contrast to the Western framing of white as purity. My research into West African textiles and adornment, such as kente cloth and the Ashetu, or Prestige hat, of the Bamileke people of Cameroon worn primarily by the elite during rituals and ceremonies, symbolizes authority and accomplishment. This investigation has pushed me toward experimenting with porcelain and colored porcelain.
By mixing porcelain with mason stains, I create distinct color clays, manipulating tone the way a DJ manipulates a sample. This remix transforms inherited materials into new forms that challenge the hierarchy of ceramic traditions and the cultural assumptions tied to color. By bringing porcelain, colored porcelain, and black and brown stoneware into conversation, Beyond Artifacts moves past preservation alone, reflecting on how materials themselves carry contested histories and meanings while opening space for new futures to be imagined and manifested.”
Hayes’ Beyond Artifacts exhibition extends the conversation between the past and the speculative future. His sculptures stand as a testament to the power of material to record, remix, and reimagine the human experience.
About Donté Hayes
Donté K. Hayes graduated summa cum laude from Kennesaw State University at Kennesaw, Georgia with a BFA in Ceramics and Printmaking with an art history minor. He received an MA and MFA with honors from the University of Iowa and is the 2017 recipient of the University of Iowa Arts Fellowship. Hayes work is included in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota, Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane, New Orleans, Louisiana, The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, the Newark Museum of Art, Newark, New Jersey, the Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, New York, the Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa, the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California and the Institute Museum of Ghana, Accra, Ghana among others.
Donté was awarded a prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant Award in 2022. He is also a 2019 Ceramics Monthly Magazine Emerging Artists and Artaxis Fellow. Hayes has been in residence at MacDowell, Peterborough, New Hampshire, Bemis Center, Omaha, Nebraska, Penland School of Craft, Penland, North Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, Maine and at the Peninsula School of Art, Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Donté K. Hayes is represented by Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, Florida.
