We celebrate 25 years of McColl Center by celebrating the artists who have been in residence since we opened our studio doors in 1999. McColl Center's artist residency program has provided space, resources, and community to nearly 500 contemporary artists from around the world and around the block. Today, we feature Bayeté Ross Smith, an Artist-in-Residence at McColl Center in 2008.
Bayeté Ross Smith amplifies perspective.
As a photographer and multimedia artist, Bayeté focuses on the concepts of identity, human interaction, and how we perceive one another. “What makes people unique is less about what they look like and more about how they think,” he says.
Bayeté's Boombox Sculptures started as an idea during his artist residency at McColl Center in 2008. “It wasn't the work I was doing at the time,” he admits, “but I got the idea to do that in the future while I was at the McColl Center, just through a series of conversations I had with people who were visiting my studio.”
One day, he and another artist were talking about how to combine audio with sculptural objects “I had the idea of creating sculptures made of boomboxes that played mixtapes of local people's oral histories and favorite songs.” That project started, grew, and has evolved.
Hip hop is at its core. “I use boomboxes because the boombox is an iconic object of hip hop culture,” he says. “[Hip hop] is some of the most beloved and enjoyed music around the world, but it comes out of an act of resisting and attempting to liberate oneself.”
Bayeté's Boombox Sculptures are cast with the pulp of sugarcane and cotton, two commodities with economic and social implications, and still play mixtapes of memories and songs. “For this new evolution of the project, I'm looking at the history of colonialism and how the policies, laws, ideology, and systems that come from colonial economics still affect us today on local and international levels,” he explains.
“The mixtapes are composed of people’s favorite freedom and liberation songs and historians talking about the history of the sugar, cotton, and tobacco industries,” he continues. “Colonial cash crop industries and why they were important historically and why they are still significant now.” His goal is to tell the stories accurately and get us to deal with this history and its effect on the present and future.
The international connection is intentional, with Boombox Sculptures rising and broadcasting local histories and songs in Cotonou and Ouidah, Benin, Paris, France, and Harlem, New York during the fall of 2024 and beyond.
Based in Harlem, Bayeté is tirelessly prolific. There is also a photobook collaboration with photojournalist and Black Panthers documentarian Stephen Shames, and exhibitions at Centre de la photographie de Mougins and Musée National Eugène-Delacroix in France. Whether in New York City, the Côte d'Azur, or West Africa, Bayeté credits his time in Charlotte as being a vital experience.
“Being [in residence at McColl Center] and having the opportunity to think in more detail and interact with a variety of different people added a strong community and public engagement element to my work,” he declares.
“It's a real testament to the value McColl Center brings to the artistic experience overall in the United States and internationally, and in terms of the value it brings to Charlotte when all these different artists are coming through [the residency] and having an accessible presence in Uptown and beyond.”
Learn more about Bayeté Ross Smith and view his work.
