The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) will present an exhibition series bridging local and global dimensions in a dynamic celebration of the city’s rich cultural histories.
This season includes Freshwater, an experimental video short directed by award-winning filmmaker and writer dream hampton; Paradox of Harmonics, the first U.S. solo museum exhibition of Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Nep Sidhu; s(h)elves?, the first museum solo exhibition of Detroit-based artist Sterling Toles; and Ground Up: Reflections on Black Abstraction, a group exhibition featuring works from Detroit arts patron James Dozier’s esteemed collection. Opening to the public on April 15, 2022, these landmark exhibitions collectively honor Black creative legacies in Detroit. An opening reception will take place on April 22, 2022, from 6–9pm.
dream hampton Freshwater (video still), 2021 Courtesy of the artist and MOCADdream hampton’s Freshwater captures the legendary filmmaker’s childhood neighborhood in Detroit’s east side, offering a sweeping picture of the area’s civic and ecological landscape. Depicted through vignettes of a father and daughter traveling through Belle Isle and interspersed with imagery captured of a flooded Detroit, Freshwater nods both to the state of the city’s stormwater infrastructure and the resilience of its families. Interweaving hampton’s memories with the greater stories of her community, Freshwater is an ode to Detroit’s history and present, realized through collaboration with local actors and producers. In recognition of the overlapping work of this season’s exhibiting artists, Freshwater’s original soundtrack is composed and produced by Sterling Toles.
Working between genres and aesthetics, Nep Sidhu’s Paradox of Harmonics includes a variety of mixed media works, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and videos. A celebration of the creative legacy of Detroit sound, Paradox of Harmonics will feature a newly commissioned work that exists as a sculptural omni-directional sound system within the exhibition. Made in conversation with Craig Huckaby, brother of the late DJ and producer Mike Huckaby, this work weaves together Mike Huckaby’s Sun Ra Reel-To-Reel work with sculptural elements that engage the praxis of Black Classical Music—emphasizing individual freedom within improvised group settings to suggest a striking harmony within one’s making and transitioning. During the duration of the exhibition, Sidhu and Huckaby’s sound system will be activated by a series of performers, including Sterling Toles.
For s(h)elves(?), Sterling Toles uses community-based activation, found objects, original music, and image-based works to explore the connection between matter and spirit as constituent parts of identity construction. In a reanimation of materials left dormant, Toles’ exhibited works incorporate mechanical detritus sourced from the decommissioned local River Rouge power plant. Toles’ exhibition begins with a six-week artist residency in the Mike Kelley Mobile
Homestead, during which invited community members will visit Toles’ “healing lab.” The resulting works, unveiled to the public on April 15, will reveal aspects of these encounters, thus grafting a link between the ethereal and material.
Ground Up: Reflections on Black Abstraction showcases work from the collection of James Dozier, whose steadfast support for Detroit’s emerging artists has been essential to the creative growth of the city. Showcasing artists long-overlooked within histories of abstraction, the works presented draw inspiration from the artists’ peer experiences as Black people growing up in a city rooted in industry. Amidst the barriers imposed upon Black artists living and working in Detroit, Ground Up is a testament to the exhibited artists’ formation of community and mentorship networks through collective experiences.
With a generational thread weaving all four exhibitions together, MOCAD’s Spring 2022 programming seeks to highlight how Detroit’s rich artistic landscape is brought to life by interconnected nodes of expression pioneered by Black artists. Though the works of the artists featured are located within deeply personal mediums, together the four exhibitions are a testament to the necessarily symbiotic nature of creating. In illuminating the connections between artists from both within and outside of Detroit, MOCAD seeks to give credence to the many communities which shape the fabric of the city.
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