Dallas
For many high school students, navigating the locker room is a daunting experience. While I can’t speak to present-day circumstances, the locker rooms of the ’90s and early 2000s resembled scenes from a slew of movies and TV shows normalizing (and sometimes celebrating) bullies, including the enduring classic Mean Girls. Regardless of any current appetite for the Regina Georges of the world, locker rooms are places inherently fraught with tension, where teenagers in various stages of puberty face their roiling hormones, insecurities, and sexual desires. Sports teams bask in triumph and rage with anger, while bullies thrive out of authority’s view. Indeed, many spaces associated with schools can conjure memories of trauma, awkwardness, and loneliness, coupled with the more positive sentiments of freedom and joy.
These anxieties and complexities were at the core of Hugh Hayden’s recent exhibition “Homecoming.” Literally a homecoming for the New York-based artist—he was born and raised in Dallas—the exhibition offered glimpses into his upbringing, complete with highly relatable stresses and insecurities. Hayden’s return to the city reimagined public and private places of personal and collective significance, such as a playground, a domestic dining room, and high school interiors. To these, he added unexpected—and sometimes treacherous—alterations. For example, in Blending In (all works 2024), which consists of a row of ready-made lockers, one door opened to reveal a football uniform covered in tree bark, a material that Hayden often uses to signify the disguises we don to fit in and feel “natural.” In this case, the result is a rough, uncomfortable exterior that recalls the equally uncomfortable personas many adopt to assimilate, or at least not stand out.
Such discomfort was apparent throughout the show. In Brush, Hayden covered the surfaces of wooden playground furniture in brush bristles, which would give any child a painful experience. Essentially unusable, the playground instead acts like a monument to play and joy, one that is untouchable and now a relic preserved in a museum. Hayden’s use of wood is nostalgic, since such workmanship on an object of public utility has largely been replaced with metal and plastic. It is also a testament to his craftsmanship and skill.
Spiny additions appear again in Supper, an ordinary dining room set made from fir. On the surfaces of the table and chairs, Hayden has meticulously carved pencils capped with erasers, pointing to the fraught experiences in some homes. These pencils also feature in Cutting Board, a long table with benches that recalls a high school lunchroom and immediately brings to mind the anxiety-inducing politics of lunchtime seating. Here, however, Hayden has exposed sharpened tips rather than eraser ends, heightening the threat of injury. It’s hard not to look at the thorny table and benches and think of Gretchen Wieners blurting out: “You can’t sit with us.” Apart from two clear patches where a desperate sitter could squeeze in, the benches are entirely covered with pencils. Two large mirrors ran parallel to the table, infinitely reflecting the scene, perhaps representing how monumental the everyday moments of high school can feel, as if one awkward interaction or misstep will reverberate forever.
With “Homecoming,” Hayden tapped into collective memory, leaving space for viewers to make their own associations and follow his visual references or not. Choosing places and objects rife with significance, he homes in on precisely how fraught and traumatic they can become. And yet, “Homecoming” left a lingering feeling of triumph. Sure, high school may have been thorny, but we lived to tell the tale.
