He makes sculptures and installations accompanied with sound as well as paintings and drawings.
This installation is called "Celestial Vessel".
Is a canoe made from 1950s RCA Victor Red
Seal 45rpm records that represents the voyage from Africa to the
Americas and the importance of music in holding different cultures
together during the slave trade. The boat form refers to modes of
dispersion, especially eighteenth-century accounts of canoes which were
used to transport captured Africans from the inland to coastal slave
markets. But it also reads as a ghost ship ready to carry us between
realms, from the harsh realities of the physical world to the promise of
the afterlife. The red records act as an imaginary archive that speaks
to the critical role of music as a means to transmit information and
bring people together, as well as to the hardships that African American
jazz artists endured in the music industry during the segregated 1950s.
As
a mixed race youth growing up in London in the 1960s and early 1970s,
Hoyt would eagerly await the arrival of the latest US imports at the
record store. It was not only a place to discover new music, but an
outlet to another world, where records informed him of the social and
political climate in the African American community and helped him shape
his personal identity. Hoyt brings his sculpture to life with his sound
composition, which samples the records on this canoe and beyond to
collage together the richly diverse sounds of Africa, North and South
America, and Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment