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With hundreds of K-dramas hitting the market each year, it's easy for even the best to fall through the cracks. Streaming services have optimized the traditional K-drama format into a shorter, more streamlined version of the same type, but that doesn't mean that shows with many filler episodes or longer paths to conclusion aren't equally good.

Redolent of African basketry, hairstyles, headwear, and pottery, Donté K. Hayes’ abstract ceramic sculptures may be interpreted as poetic vessels, even though they lack traditional openings. While we easily associate clay pots and round woven forms with ideas related to storage, protection, and even spiritual significance, they also nod to the human head as a holder—a kind of receptacle for culture, language, personal expression, and dreams.

For the past several years, Hayes has approached porcelain with an emphasis on mostly monochrome black forms with meticulously hand-marked surfaces with textures that appear almost strand-like. Recently, he’s begun incorporating colored porcelain into the bulbous forms, inspired by African textiles like kente cloth and a kind of hat called ashetu, or prestige hats, worn by high-status Bamileke people of Cameroon. “The head is more than the center of the brain and thought; it is the place where the soul lives and must be protected,” the artist says.

In addition to Indigenous adornment traditions of Western and Central Africa, Hayes often references his interest in hip-hop culture. “Sweater,” for example, nods to the late rap star Biggie Smalls—a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.—and his penchant for wearing colorful knits, such as COOGI, a brand hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

In addition to other vibrant new works, this piece “speaks to the African Diaspora’s freedom to be bold, unapologetic, and fully at ease in their own skin,” Hayes says. “Through experimenting with colored porcelain and by combining porcelain with mason stains to create distinct colored tones, like a DJ, I remix inherited materials into new forms, challenging ceramic hierarchies and cultural assumptions tied to color.”

Hayes’ motifs and forms draw from an array of sources, such as pottery made in Ghana and Burkina Faso, which often have ceremonial purposes. “Garner” takes these often bulbous, heavily textured vessels as a starting point, which Hayes also considers within the context of everyday use and popular culture.

“In ‘Garner,’ these traditional pottery forms visually evoked for me both bubble wrap—a material designed to safeguard fragile objects—and the Daleks from Doctor Who, a protagonist authoritarian race who destroy and exterminate other worlds and cultures through time and space,” Hayes says. “By merging these divergent ideas, I create a ‘future artifact’—a work that preserves ancestral knowledge and reclaims what was lost or erased due to the historic Atlantic slave trade and systemic racism, while also opening new possibilities for healing, care, and empowerment in the present and future.”

Hayes currently has work on view through February 18 in Ancestral Objects: Holders of Memory, Space and Time at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s UT Downtown Gallery. Forthcoming exhibitions this spring include his solo show, Ancestral Tomorrows, at the Sarah Moody Galley of Art at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, plus inclusion in the group exhibition Remix to Motown 45: Side A, Side B at The Carr Center in Detroit. Another solo show, Ancestral Remix at Peter Anthony Fine Art in Charleston, opens in April. Follow updates on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Traditional African Baskets and Pottery Meet Pop Culture in Donté K. Hayes’ Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.

Chinese spies are posing as job recruiters to trick staff in western governments into disclosing sensitive information, the Five Eyes alliance of security agencies has warned.

China’s military intelligence services advertise false jobs such as foreign policy or defence analysts on platforms including LinkedIn, the spy agencies of Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand said jointly late Wednesday.

The agents pretend to be HR consultants or employees of “legitimate-looking” private consultancies or think-tanks that claim to be located outside of China.

They pressurise candidates into revealing “non-public” information during the interview process, including by writing a report, the intelligence agencies said.

People with security clearance, military personnel, journalists and academics are among those targeted, the Five Eyes added.

Military staff may be asked about their roles and unit activities, home base or naval vessel.

Recruits receive anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per report, and may be offered more money in return for increasingly sensitive information, the agencies said.

They warned that “while applicants often have no direct access to classified information, even unclassified information” can be helpful to the Chinese government.

“Certain types of data can place the lives of frontline military or other personnel at risk, can weaken our economic prosperity, and enable interference in our democratic processes,” the agencies wrote.

They said they had identified people who had been duped by the scam, “leading to criminal prosecutions, job losses, and security-clearance revocation”.

Western spy agencies have repeatedly warned of the threat of espionage from China, as well as from Russia and Iran, in recent years.

Last month, two Chinese-British dual nationals were convicted by a jury in London of spying on Hong Kong dissidents on Beijing’s behalf. They are awaiting sentencing.