My work is about how the personal, political, and historical are intertwined in a person's identity. Through wood burning, woodworking, painting, and drawing, I create work laminated with multiple stories: peeling back layers of race, history, and personal memories. For example, the artwork, Large Wooden Spoon (please see my images), has multiple connotations. It was a utensil that my Oma (grandmother) cooked with and therefore symbolizes nurturing - it was also a utensil she used to discipline her grandchildren. The Spoon became a symbol in my family (and a private joke) of a grandmother that loved her grandchildren AND had expectations of us to be ready for a world that would not always be kind. The fallen petals and ashes around the Spoon are symbols of what she had to endure as a woman of color and the sacrifices she made for her family. Like the Spoon, each work holds intersectional meanings. Meanings that tell a personal, historical, and national narrative. As a visual storyteller, I want to reveal the stories history attempts to erase and display how the past, the individual, the present, and the political are interwoven in people's identities.

Halima Afi Cassells (b. 1981) is an award-winning interdisciplinary community-engaged artist, mom of three, avid gardener, with deep roots in Waawiiyaataanong/ Detroit, MI. Born into a creative family, her parents photographed her unsolicited murals and fashions as a kid, encouraging her exploration. Community is theheart of her work. She credits gardening as inspiring her move away from painting to a practice where she aspires to use natural, found, and up-cycled materials and processes that lend to the thriving of all (human and non-human) communities.

Halima continues to explore relationship-building, and the notions of freedom and work, value and disposability in a participatory context through projects like the Free Market of Detroit, Traveling Indigo Vat, and her Tables and Thrones series. Awarded the 2023 Kresge Arts in Detroit fellowship for interdisciplinary art, Cassells continually dives down rabbit holes seeking to understand the interconnectedness of systems and self. A self-guided student of anthropology, macroeconomics, British imperialism and common law, global corporatism, climate crisis, and psychology; she uses her art with the intent of returning to a 'right relationship.' As an advocate for artists and cultural practitioners, she has spearheaded many community processes that uplift cultural capital from often-exploited communities and creates in a collaborative context. She has been awarded grants from: Panta Rhea Foundation, BulkSpace, WDET, Art Matters, Culture Source, Knight Foundation Arts Challenge, and Artplace America. In addition to Detroit, her work has been featured in spaces in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Oakland CA, Oaxaca, Berlin, Copenhagen, Bogota, and Harare.

“In general, my art should be viewed as a visual representation of the human condition. The realization of my thoughts and emotions through the creation of my art is a way for me to express my inner self. In turn, I understand that my inner self is merely a particular manifestation of the human condition that connects everybody, and so it may be said that by expressing my inner self and revealing personal truths, I am attempting to reveal truths about us all.

More specifically, the creation of my art is an attempt to establish my identity, and to resolve my inner conflicts that have arisen from growing up as a foreigner in diverse communities. Born in Lebanon, raised partly in Sierra Leone, and finally in America, I have always been aware of my diverse surroundings as an outsider, and, in turn, how others have viewed me as different.

These circumstances have compelled me throughout my life to contemplate such themes as ethnicity, identity, diversity, anxiety, fear, love, and acceptance, just to name a few. My art helps me realize these contemplations and provides opportunity for them to be discussed with others in hopes of forging a connection and an understanding between others and myself, and between emotions and the physical world. 

I make art to encourage critical investigation of oneself and the world. Hopefully in turn this facilitates communication, acceptance, and a symbiotic existence.”

"Joshua Ice’s body of work explores the idea of manufactured nostalgia: examining everyday items and reinterpreting how they may affect our lives. A heavy focus on foundational elements of composition, texture, and lighting creates a platform on which material and process motivate the form and function of Ice’s work. Assemblages of reclaimed construction mediums combined with high-tech light and video components probe our past and present, creating traversable territories and moments in time. Juxtaposing recovered windows and scaffolding with flashing lights and live camera feeds, material maintenance merges with the maintenance of one’s self, offering endless landscapes to survey and investigate through the lens of freshly built future worlds. Influenced by Sarah Oppenheimer, Gordon Matta Clark, Olafur Eliasson, and Alicja Kwade, Joshua investigates ways in which the processes related to the design, construction, and maintenance of a space can be considered within the context of installation art."

His bold, vibrant images can be spotted throughout the Detroit metropolitan region. Chances are if you’ve visited Mexicantown, Greektown, the Cultural Center, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit Athletic Club or any number of other landmark community attractions, you’ve encountered the remarkable work of master artist Hubert Massey.

An award-winning Kresge Fine Arts Fellow, his distinctive fresco murals grace the halls of such visible Michigan destinations as the Flint Institute of the Arts, Detroit Athletic Club, and his alma mater, Grand Valley State University, where he earned an honorary doctorate of fine arts in 2012. In 2014 the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority commissioned Hubert to create the first large-scale mural completed for Cobo Center since 1987. A fresco painting, the mural will feature images and tell stories of Detroit community pride.

Hubert studied at the University of London’s Slade Institute of Fine Arts and later learned the centuries-old fresco technique from former assistants of legendary artist Diego Rivera. Today Hubert is the only known, African American commissioned fresco artist in America. 

“Public art begins with the community it will serve. In fact, after nearly 20 years of creating large-scale public works of art for various cities, communities and neighborhoods throughout the Midwest, it is my belief that public art should be, first and foremost, meaningful to those who surround it.” (Dr. Hubert Massey)

My artworks evoke stories about how force and violence still determine the rhythms of power structures. My work reflects the events, hidden stories and feelings that I have grasped through observing a range of shifting political winds in West Asia, the cultural phenomena following the 1979 revolution in Iran, and comprehending US imperialism. Although the source for my imagery is specific, I compose the scenes to feel vaguely familiar, almost dreamlike, at times nightmarish, something that could be taking place anywhere and at any time. 

My later projects examine how threats are employed by the state to ignite fear in order to justify violence. Theidea of a state under capitalism results in exacerbating aggression, tension and war. The state, as a military institution, has the ultimate power to use fear in order to justify military action, policing, and imprisonment to control and dominate disadvantaged people. Fear, on the individual level, creates anxiety, insecurity and a sense of unease for individuals, which can make them conformist and obedient citizens.

My work looks at power and questions the levels of violence that it causes, as well as possibilities to resist such a phenomenon that we collectively face with increasing levels of global militarist politics.