The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit is a remarkable space and it is such a pleasure to see curatorial dedication to local artists.

 

Just behind the museum is Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, a replica of the home in the Detroit suburbs where Mike Kelley grew up.  Mobile Homestead hosts artists to interpret the interior in temporary installations and create a dialogue about community, private and public space, and the American dream.  Carlos Rolon created a hilariously fun, shag carpeted, macramé wall hanging filled pop-up nail salon within a vintage retro domestic space.

The houses and the homes that Nancy Mitchnick paints brings a vibrant nostalgic beauty to the dilapidated cityscape that plagued Detroit after the white flight of the automobile industry decline.

It was very impactful seeing photographs of the buildings beside Mitchnick’s paintings, and allowed the viewers to understand the evolution of the vibrancy of the city and how the beauty is still there in the ruins with bastions of vitality remaining and resurfacing.  The sheer scale of Mitchnick’s paintings bring a calm to the nostalgic reflection of seeing familiar suburban homes that you remember just a little differently from your childhood memories.