"Insight"
Peter Anthony Fine Art is thrilled to present Ancestral Remix, a solo exhibition by award-winning artist Donté K. Hayes from April 25 to May 23 at 15 Broad Street. The collection will feature original ceramic abstract sculptures crafted by the artist in his Cliffwood, New Jersey and Atlanta, Georgia studios. This is his first solo exhibit in Charleston. The public is invited to an opening reception on April 25 from 5-7 PM at the gallery.
To kick off the exhibition, Hayes will be a featured speaker during Art Charleston 2026 at The Gibbes Museum of Art on Saturday, April 25 at 2 p.m. Hayes won the Gibbes’ 2019 Society 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art and has a sculpture titled “Sanctuary” on permanent display in the museum’s Mary Jackson Modern and Contemporary Gallery.
For the upcoming Ancestral Remix exhibit at Peter Anthony Fine Art, Hayes created custom pieces inspired by the architecture and pathways of Charleston, vernacular architectural forms, and the built environments of West and Central Africa. This exhibit is a part of Hayes’ ongoing series, Future Artifacts – a collection born from a desire to create the heirlooms that are missing, lost, or erased from Hayes’ family lineage and from the broader history of the African Diaspora. Each sculpture explores how people of African descent have historically navigated, adapted, and transformed their surroundings to create home under conditions of displacement. The works ask how objects, spaces, and bodies can hold memory while offering protection, grounding, and continuity.
“My ceramic sculptures function as ‘future artifacts’ that remix ancestral traditions, respond to contemporary realities, and envisions resilient futures,” said Hayes. “At the core of this work is the belief that objects carry knowledge. We understand past civilizations largely through the ceramics they left behind. Ancestral Remix positions ceramic sculpture as a powerful tool for shaping how culture, memory, and humanity resonate across generations. Rather than treating history as fixed, the exhibition frames memory as active, fluid, and continuously remixed. These works function as objects to your future self that is full of wisdom and hope.”
Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Hayes graduated summa cum laude from Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia with a BFA in Ceramics and Printmaking with an Art History minor. He received his MA and MFA with honors from the University of Iowa and is the 2017 recipient of the University of Iowa Arts Fellowship. Recent art exhibitions include group shows at the Museum of Science + Industry in Chicago, Illinois; the Association of Visual Arts in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta. In 2020, the Smithsonian American Art Museum permanently acquired his piece “Initiate,” an arduously textured sculpture that evokes the surface of a pineapple and tension of Black bodies in inhospitable spaces.
Peter Anthony Fine Art is honored to present this series by Donté K. Hayes from April 25 through May 23 at the gallery. For additional information or to request a preview of the exhibition, please contact Kaitlin Bellune at kaitlin@peteranthonyfineart.com.