Stephen Hayes | Visiting Artist Limited

On February 16 at the Gibbes, Stephen Hayes, the 2020 winner of the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, launches the creation of the Anson African Burial Memorial, a monument to honor 36 African/African Americans, now called the Ancestors, whose bodies, buried in the second half of the eighteenth century, were disinterred during the renovation of the Gaillard in 2013. Hayes will be molding the hands of 36 volunteers whose age, ethnicity and gender match those of the Ancestors. Molded first from life, the hands will be cast in bronze and will surround a fountain basin made in part from earth taken from some of the 80 pre-1865  African/African American burial sites that have now been identified on the Charleston peninsula. The Memorial will be located on George Street near Anson Street.