Africa to Carolina Artist Team

Meet the Africa to Carolina Artist Team

The NC African American Heritage Commission (NCAAHC) collaborated with the North Carolina Art Museum, the North Carolina Arts Council, and community connections to share the call for artists. To ensure a statewide reach, NCAAHC worked with four artists, community facilitators, and descendants who were identified and compensated to share the call: Angel Dozier of Be Connected Durham; September Krueger, Wilmington-based visual artist and arts educator; Tyanna West, historian and Gullah Geechee descendant; and Heather Walker of Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project.

Fourteen portfolios were passed to the selection committee. Given the strength of their application package, their experience, and their community engagement processes as public artists, Stephen Hayes and David Wilson were selected as the Africa to Carolina artist team. Both artists are rooted in North Carolina with incredible experience amplifying community stories and placing public art projects in connected communities.

David Wilson

David Wilson is a Durham, North Carolina–based public artist, creative placemaker, Hampton University graduate, and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, whose work explores the intersection of art, history, technology, and community. A student of prolific muralist and NC-Native, Dr. John Biggers, David has led the design of public art projects throughout North Carolina and across the United States over the past 20 years, creating works that inspire dialogue, celebrate cultural heritage, and strengthen communities through metal, glass, stone, and emerging technologies such as augmented reality.

Recognized as one of the 2025 Top 50 Public Art Stars by CODAworx, David is known for his collaborative, community-centered approach that brings together artists, fabricators, technologists, and local stakeholders to create meaningful, place-based experiences. His longstanding partnership with acclaimed sculptor Stephen Hayes—including their current commission for the City of Cincinnati honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and the Six Principles of Nonviolence—reflects his commitment to creating historically grounded public art that celebrates African American history, civic leadership, and the power of collective action.

Stephen Hayes

Stephen Hayes is the Esbenshade Assistant Professor of the Practice of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. A multi-media sculptor who calls himself a “creator” rather than artist, Hays is a Durham, NC, native who works in wood, metal, fabric, paper, castings and sound. He is known for making life-size sculptures that address the United States’ conflicted history of slavery.

His work has been shown over a decade at galleries and museums, also been shown at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC, and been reviewed in the New York Times and Washington Post. He created “Boundless,” to commemorate the Black Union soldiers who fought in the American Civil War and used castings from those soldiers’ descendants, and the Anson African Burial Memorial in Charleston SC where he casted 36 pairs of hands of people from the area to represent the 36 enslaved bodies found in an mass grave and collected soil from mass graves around Charleston to make the memorial.