A couple years ago, I began exploring the reported resurgence and renewal of Detroit while creating the below painting.
When I finished it, I wrote a bit about the many exciting and innovative projects involved in the city’s revitalization. But it’s not such a simple story…
My mom is from Detroit, and we often visited on holidays and summers throughout the 80s and 90s. Detroit exemplifies American post-WW2 post-industrial urban decline. The decades of de-investment, de-population (“white flight”) visibly manifested in the mass decay of the city’s built environment… “Ruin porn” became a thing.
The story of decay foregrounds abandoned homes, empty neighbourhoods, vacant industrial buildings—”abandoned,” “empty,” “vacant.”
In 2017, the City of Detroit reported over 150,000 vacant or abandoned parcels of land—that’s 1/3 of the city (Safransky 2017). Acquisition and development of this land is central to the city’s revitalization plan. But the ownership, value, and meaning of this so-called abandoned/empty/vacant land is disputed by the people who live on it, care for it, and imagine different futures on it.
Considered within histories of racialized dispossession and conditionalities of Black property ownership in the US, and with a population that is 83% Black, the reimagining of Detroit’s “abandoned” spaces has invoked, for some, a sense of settler colonialism (Cherry 2018)…. as gentrification does.
The reimagining of Detroit often overlooks community histories and the decades of community-led revitalization initiatives and interventions. Yet, in the context of its current “resurgence,” the city’s deep activist roots have inspired historical consciousness-raising among communities (exciting!!). (Ryzewski 2022).
⚠️Here’s my related news:⚠️ I’m doing an artist research residency in Detroit in June, 2025! I’m going to reconnect with the city, explore some community archives, and experience being in-place by doing abstract art-making.
