Coming home
JAMES RUSSELL | Contributing Writerjames.journo@gmail.com Hugh Hayden knows the meaning of a homecoming: The gay, Black artist played football at Jesuit High School in Dallas, and he has experienced the jubilance, social events and dances of the annual homecoming games.
Now based in New York, the artist is experiencing a different type of homecoming. There’s no crowd, no tailgating and no dance, but there is a cafeteria and locker room in his solo show Hugh Hayden: Homecoming.
This show is Hayden’s hometown debut, and it runs through Jan, 5 at the Nasher Sculpture Center. Hayden’s best known for building critiques of the American Dream.
That includes criticizing the inaccessibility to public education, as in his 2022 installation Brier Patch, an ambitious installation in New York’s Madison Square Park of 100 newly-minted school desks assembled into “classrooms,” and his recent commentary on Black masculinity, guns and queer life built around bathroom stalls at Lisson Gallery in Los Angeles.
