Artist Biography

In the fall of 2020, I moved to Detroit, MI, as the Artist in Residence at Wayne State University. I began looking into Detroit's history and working to create an exhibition that layer’s history, geography, social relations, and the present together. Layering them next to each other to create an image that is not only wholly of Detroit, but also America, using Detroit as a point of study. I wanted to find something that revealed the promise of Detroit that many Black Southerners sought during the great migration -- and how the fallout of that promise has led us to Detroit now -- by mapping Detroit's history of red and green lining, white flight, and divestment. 

I found the story of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, two prominent Black neighborhoods that were demolished in the late 1950s/early 60s to be replaced by a freeway in the name of progress. These neighborhoods were considered the heart of Detroit's Black community. I dug through the archives of the Detroit Public Library and came across images from Black Bottom and Paradise Valley before their destruction. These found images held so much life and community. Capturing a community just a few years before it was displaced and raised. Using these images and archival information, I created a series of works to talk about forced migration that is honest and painful, but also resilient. It shows people finding and making paradise while living as a Black person in a system that we were never meant to survive in. 

The images found in the archive became the starting point. The images were digitally woven by a jacquard loom, and then I began to physically remove and rip signs of life from them. In many ways, I became the aggressor removing the community by hand. Using the pieces I removed, I collaged together images of that community exiting Black Bottom/Paradise Valley and entering a fictional space, where they eventually find and create a new paradise. There is a fragility and fantasy to this newly created space. Even though it is gilded and bright, this paradise feels tenuous, like it might fall apart at any moment and is just one step away from destruction. 

With this work, I am laying the promise of "The Garden of the West" next to the 1950s destruction of Black infrastructure and the contemporary resilience of Black Detroiters creating the community to find a way through, while simultaneously understanding that the displacement of Black Americans is continuous and systematic. The space in the African diasporas is permanent -- it can be entered, but one can never leave. It is finding paradise over, and over, and over again.  (Quinn A. Hunter)

Artist Statement

Love is a Home You Find Again and Again, 2022, Quinn A. Hunter, cotton, upholstery, glass beads, and jacquard woven images.