Scene: Hugh Hayden’s studio in Brooklyn, New York, December 2023.
Enter Arthur Peña, artist, writer, and such.
Hugh [to Riley, his studio assistant]: Could you water these, Riley? Could you give it two things in the yellow elephant?
Arthur: What are those plants?
Hugh: They’re palm trees, but it’s right by the heater, so now it needs more water.
Arthur: Have you used these plants in any installations?
Hugh: I haven’t. They’re just for ambiance, but they probably take up too much space, and they need care and maintenance. And I think this one was originally in my apartment, but it just grew too big.
Arthur: Whoa. This was?
Hugh: Yes, but right now it doesn’t look its best. It is not growing. When it’s not growing, it doesn’t look so good.
Arthur: Would you ever harvest these for material for the work?
Hugh [while watering plants]: Not these, at least not yet. I do have an idea to do something with a houseplant, but I wouldn’t actually use the real houseplant because they don’t yield wood, and most of my things are more about using the wood. An idea I’ve gone back and forth with for the Nasher show is to sculpt a houseplant out of wood—some common plant with branches coming out of the form of the plant, playing with camouflage and something that’s foreign. Therefore, a tropical houseplant that’s not native to the US trying to blend in into the settings by having tree branches.
Arthur: The houseplant is essentially a domestication symbol. I mean, obviously it’s in the name: a houseplant. But that idea of domestication isn’t necessarily something that I’ve seen explored in the work that you’ve made so far, is it? I mean, you explored different ideas very directly, but the idea of domestication …
Hugh: I focus more on assimilation, so I’m talking about trying to make the houseplant look more American by giving it branches versus being just a foliage plant. Like, if I re-created a bird of paradise but re-created the leaves out of wood with branches, to me, it’s not domestication but maybe a form of assimilation.
Arthur: There’s force behind assimilation though, right?
Hugh: Domestication too.
Arthur: Yeah, exactly. Domestication too. How does that force, I mean, the idea of forcing something to assimilate or domesticate, come through? How you’re forcing this thing into a new identity.
Hugh: Well, I think it’s representative of people. I put the plant material through these anthropomorphic gestures to some degree, even though it might be very abstract in how it’s anthropomorphic, but it's representative of people subscribing to a cultural assimilation or forced domestication, or being cultivated. I think that’s reflective of people through different means. Whether it’s an education system or wearing clothes, or ways of keeping our hair, we’re in some form of domestication.
Arthur: Thinking about assimilation, we’re both from Dallas. I'm born and raised in Oak Cliff.
Hugh: Oh! What streets?
Arthur: I’m from the Cockrell Hill area, so Jefferson and Westmoreland in West Oak Cliff.
Hugh: I’m from near there too. I grew up off I-20 and Cedar Ridge, near Camp Wisdom and Duncanville.
Arthur: Thinking about where we’re from ... I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and that was my comfort zone for 18 years. We were in these bubbles, and Texas is itself this bubble, and Duncanville even. This idea of assimilation coming from a Texan, I mean, it has to be something that we constantly think about or at least have had to think about in different ways growing up there and in different neighborhoods.
Hugh: Yeah, totally. Because the neighborhoods are built at different times, so they reflect different means of urban planning and the types of houses that were built at that time. They have a different aesthetic because of the limited amount of land, whereas in bigger, broader cities things might not get updated but rather are torn down to build, let’s say, a whole new shopping center.
Arthur: To have a sense of history in Dallas is very tough because not many things last that long. They tear down stuff all the time. When you move to someplace like New York where a building could be from 1920s, 1930s, it has more history. And, of course, in your work you bring in materials that have history already embedded in them. Are you reclaiming a history of the material? Are you changing that history of the material when you bring it into the studio, or when it transforms into something else? How much of the history do you want to stay in the material that you're using?
Hugh: I’d say I’m remixing things because as an artist, I’m not a scientist. I’m not an authoritative voice. I’m remixing things to my perspective, an alternative perspective, and I embrace that. I can mine associated cultural histories, material properties, and symbolisms that an object or material might have, but then I can manipulate them. It doesn’t have to be factual because as an artist I’m just challenging ways of perceiving and looking at something. To me it’s a positive if it questions your notion of what’s real and what’s not.
Arthur: But when you pack in all the ideas that you have—for instance wanting the work to tell the narrative—you want [the work] to communicate these bigger ideas of assimilation, or remixing a history of an object. You’ll also allow it to tell its own story, and you leave enough room for us to really navigate it on our own terms. It’s not pedantic.
Hugh: Well, in the beginning it was pedantic or didactic, and as I mature as an artist, or start to mature, I want to explain my decision-making less and less. I also want to make it more, not ambiguous, but more open-ended and adaptable to different perspectives. People on opposing ends of some ideology might come to a work of mine and love it or hate it for two totally different reasons. To me, that’s successful. If I can manipulate someone’s perspective on cultural issues, then the work is a vehicle for exploring. Hopefully it can cause you to rethink the way you interact with the world. That’s part of why I use familiar materials, and forms, and concepts because you already have some sort of association with them, and I want to manipulate that.
Arthur: A lot of your work is described as not necessarily welcoming; it keeps you at a distance because of the branches and what not, yet because of the way the material is manipulated, you want to get close to it and examine, but it’s really always pushing you away.
For me, I’m always trying to find the artist as a person in the work. Now that you have an oeuvre you can look back on, do you feel like there’s any specific parts of yourself in your work? Do you look and think, “Oh, here’s the mirror and this is what I’m seeing.”
Hugh: Oh, I think definitely there’s autobiographical qualities to the work. I think every artist’s work is somewhat autobiographical. Even if I was just some abstract artist drawing lines in the sand, another person would draw it completely differently or try to make it circle. And it’s somewhat informed by your life experiences. I know a lot of people try to get away from identity in their work, but I think it’s inevitable that someone's work is somewhat autobiographical.
Arthur: You mentioned deadlines earlier, with them sort of forcing you to finish an idea. You don’t just get to go on this tangent necessarily, and that maybe wasn’t always the case. Do you have a sense of what that has done to your work and the way that you work? Having all the time in the world to work on something versus, “No, we have two deadlines. We have to get it out by next month.”
Hugh: I should say, because I’m a sculptor, I can’t take up space. I don’t necessarily just make things to some degree. A lot of times there is awareness of where they can be shown or exhibited, and I gear the things that I’ve been thinking about making to fit within these exhibition opportunities and try to retool the exhibition opportunities to work with the ideas of things I want to make. But ultimately, yeah, there’s a deadline involved in that, which unfortunately becomes a stressful element. That’s always a little frustrating. I think the artistic process isn't something I can just turn on and turn off and compartmentalize, because it’s a creative process thing. It’s subjective. It’s not like we’re making machine parts and we know how long it takes to make each piece—subjective things are involved in everything.
Arthur: Do you have any feelings about this museum show at the Nasher? Being in Dallas and going back to Dallas?
Hugh: Oh, definitely. I hate to say homecoming, because it’s not like I'm expecting some, well, I went to Jesuit for high school and homecoming is a big deal. I guess it is everywhere with Dallas football.
Arthur: Yeah, homecoming is a big deal in Texas.
Hugh: Maybe I should make a mum. I was thinking of a letter jacket.
Arthur: Those two things are very, very Texas. Yes.
Hugh: A main thing in this show that I’ve been thinking about making is this, well, you probably might’ve been aware of this place called Kidsville, which was like a park in Duncanville that had this big wooden playground castle.
Arthur: Yeah, of course. That kind of wooden playground was very '80s/'90s.
Hugh: I was in Dallas/Fort Worth last spring—I was in a show at the Amon Carter—and I stayed at my mom’s house who just left Dallas for LA where my brother lives. I went and took a whole bunch of pictures there because I knew I wanted to re-create part of it for the Nasher show. Ironically, they tore it down sometime after I went and took those photos. I had no idea it was getting torn down. So, I had been there twice within the past two years to look at it, but it really made a difference this last time.
Arthur: That’s very personal. I think some of these other objects you make are ambiguous about what they are or even what they mean, but in this particular case, given the reference point—a place in your home base—it really imbues this specific work with a nostalgia that I don’t necessarily gather from the other objects that you've made.
Hugh: There’s a piece that I made out of mesquite trees. I made a re-creation of the kitchen table that we had at some point in my childhood, that at least a lot of people in the country identified with, because it has a certain look—this round kitchen table with these certain type of chairs. It was in this orangey oak color. It won't be in the show, but I’ve been thinking about making a different version of it, or a dining room table made a similar way that has this sort of nostalgia.
This is making me make all these notes for this show. Great.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Regrettably not included: The fact that Hugh worked as a full-time architect at Starbucks while getting his MFA at Columbia, using the NBA draft as a metaphor for gallery interest after his 2018 show at White Columns, and Arthur's affection for watermelon.
Image credits:
Thumbnail: Hugh Hayden: Homecoming Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas TX September 14, 2024-January 5, 2025 Caption List Hugh Hayden (American, b. 1983) Hugh Hayden, Oct 2020, Credit-Michael Avedon for 65CPW. Hugh Hayden, America, 2018.Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) on plywood.Overall dimensions: 43 1/8 x 80 7/8 x 80 7/8inches (109.8 x 205.7 x 205.7 cm). © HughHayden. Image courtesy of Lisson Gallery
Hero: Hugh Hayden: Homecoming Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas TX September 14, 2024-January 5, 2025 Caption List Hugh Hayden (American, b. 1983) Hugh Hayden, Oct 2020, Credit-Michael Avedon for 65CPW. Hugh Hayden, America, 2018.Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) on plywood.Overall dimensions: 43 1/8 x 80 7/8 x 80 7/8inches (109.8 x 205.7 x 205.7 cm). © HughHayden. Image courtesy of Lisson Gallery
Hugh Hayden in his studio by Arthur Peña
Hugh Hayden, Brier Patch, 2022.Cedar and aluminum. One hundred objects, each approximately 8 x 8 x 8 feet (2.4 x 2.4 x2.4 meters). © Hugh Hayden. Photo byYasunori Matsui/Madison Square Park Conservancy, collection the artist, courtesy ofLisson Gallery. Exhibition organized by Madison Park Conservancy, New York
Hugh Hayden,Good Hair 3 (Brainwash),2021. White oak, wire drawn Black boar hair (bristle), metal face mask. 10 x 11 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches (25.4 x 29.2 x 24.1 cm). © HughHayden. Photo by Mark Waldhauser, courtesy of Lisson Gallery
Hugh Hayden,Crown of Thorns, 2020.Welded steel, 8 x 13 3/8 x 10 5/8 inches (20.3 x 34 x 27 cm). © Hugh Hayden. Photoby Jenny Gorman, courtesy of Lisson Gallery