Artist’s Project: Hayden Dunham

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Hayden Dunham’s MELT D|D OWN requires your participation to be “activated.” The audio component of this fascinating project, accessible only via careful sleuthing by readers, is meant to accompany a process of “discovering the potential in objects”—in this case, an insert in her project utiliziing a revolutionary paper stock—“for the release of their physical form; dissolving this physical reality into something else: an in-between.” 

Born in 1988 in Austin, TX, Hayden Dunham is a multimedia artist whose work stems from intricate concepts that manifest as visible and invisible systems. For Everythings, a three-person show at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York in 2015, Dunham created a chemical called “GEL” that existed as a solid, a liquid, and a gas circulated through the gallery’s air vents. In 2016, she was featured with Nicolas Lobo in the two-person installation BIO:DIP at Red Bull Studios, New York. Since 2018, Dunham has been working on building a water sanctuary alongside a volcanic strand of 160-degree mineral-rich hot spring water in Southern California. For her second solo exhibition at Company Gallery in 2022, Dunham presented an immersive installation of living sculptures. Dunham, who has studios in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Austin, is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery.