Using different media, Hayes sheds light on the human condition as it relates to working-class African Americans, as well as larger communities of men and women. Raised in the South as part of a family that watched the 6-o’clock news, read Ebony and Jet, as well as the local newspapers, Hayes developed a strong interest in picture-making—the basic ideas of looking, recording, and interpreting—and portraiture early on.

Drawing from his everyday experiences, Chase examines the relationship between space and gender as social constructs; the ways in which gender identity is affected by our immediate environment and the dominant societal norms that exist within that space. For “Sheets,” Chase delves further into this idea of gender performativity, using spatial obscurity as a means of protecting his autobiographical subjects from the trappings of ethno-cultural stereotypes and societal expectations.