As a part of my investigation for my Curatorial Fellowship with Room Project I asked a few artists in my community the question, “How do you articulate care for self, others (human + beyond) and/or place?”

With their responses I created a publication that documents their practices of care and gratitude and archives my own.

This publication is intended to pose the same question to its reader. We collect these responses, thoughts, rituals, practices and experiences to come to a better understanding of ways to be with one another and engender a future of reciprocity.

For me art making/curating is often an externalization of care and learnings I have received through relationship, and that feels especially true in the case of this artifact. The publication is intrinsically an act of community care that was made through partnership, support and co-making.

Grateful to Clare Gatto, Sara Nishikawa, Meg Barry, Taraneh Fazeli, Leah Rutt, Lauren Williams, Erin Martinez, Navjeet Kaur, Halima Afi Cassels, Jamaal May, Liz Kennedy, Ellen Rutt, Nate Mullen III and of course Room Project for each of the individual ways you have contributed to or supported this project.

—Cyrah Dardas

SAYLEM CELESTE (they/them) is an alchemist, sound selector, and theorist born and raised in Waawiyatanong (Detroit, Michigan.) They create images, objects, and containers that communicate the complex relationship between Black-Queer-Femme identifying people and ideas of home, heritage and care. Their creations begin to address the broken connections between the communities they belong to and their collective rights to uninhibited expressions of humanity, spirituality and pleasure. saylem works in the Black folk tradition of quilting; as well as sonic mixing and space curation as a deejay; as well as having an investment in incorporating the tactics of mutual aid into everything that they do: in order to cultivate and spirit of healing, restoration, and solace to those in need of care.

saylem celeste

Sanctuary, Fall 2022

Sanctuary is an installation that is as much about home as it is belonging. It’s about heritage and returning, as much as it’s about visions and future-think. Sanctuary is one iteration of my process of making the home space that exist within my mind, that develops and changes as my needs see fit. This iteration specifically is a tribute to a long three years of growing pains and deep lessons learned through my ‘home’ in other people- and the beauty that has come of a new found resilience.

CYDNEY CAMP (b. 1994, Detroit) is an artist whose oil paintings and drawings embody the diversity of Black life. She imbues her works with an aura of power and tranquility through a vibrant color palette, often introducing elements of abstraction, forming dreamlike compositions. Many of her scenes reflect moments of peace among Black figures, positioning leisure as an act of protest against marginalization, particularly in regards to Black femininity. As a whole, her works engender a reality outside the exploitative extraction of the Black body that pervades our broader cultural ethos.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Camp has exhibited across Detroit and Michigan, including at K.O. Gallery, Norwest Gallery, Ann Arbor Art Center, Center for Detroit Arts & Culture, Detroit Fiber Works, and many more. She lives and works in Hamtramck, Detroit.

Please direct all inquiries to info@theprocessdetroit.com

Cydney Camp

Blue Sky Green Grass, Spring 2021

Room Project and BULK SPACE are proud to present "Blue Sky, Green Grass," a new installation in windows I+II by artist Cydney Camp. This installation grew out of the workshop, "Writing for the Contemporary," where BULK SPACE members and local Detroit artists engaged in an eight-week discourse on their artwork and various entry points into the world of contemporary art. We are so very pleased to have an installation here that has organically grown from these relationships and dialogues.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
A statement from the artist, Cydney Camp:
"Blue Sky, Green Grass" offers a moment of tranquility, nostalgia, and play. Centered around two paintings ‘Juneteenth (Teenth)’ and ‘Gardening Man’, the installation invites the viewer into an immersive and verdant world that is complete with live plants, atmospheric paintings, and outdoor accessories, that all flourish under the sun. During a time of social distancing and growing collective anxieties, the vignette is a grounding reminder that our rich existence is cradled between blue sky and green grass.

SARAH BRENNAN is a visual artist based in Detroit. She earned her BFA from the University of Michigan in 2014 and has since exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. She has worked extensively as a teaching artist, most notably with Living Arts Detroit and Youth Arts Alliance. She is currently working towards her first solo exhibition.

Sarah Brennan

This Won’t Last Forever, Winter 2021

We're proud to announce an installation on Room Project's south wall by the artist Sarah Brennan. THIS WON'T LAST FOREVER is a print series and installation documenting the first 100 days of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the United States.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
From Sarah: "About a week into ‘shelter in place’ I found myself drawing and carving several small blocks at once as a way to deal with the anxiety of such an abruptly unprecedented time. One of these images was a dove in flight. Once I began painting back into the prints the different shades of blue I was feeling, I realized I wanted to create a dove to represent every day of the impending quarantine. The process, much like the first several months of lock-down, was tedious and maddening. Every day felt like a faulty duplicate of the last; another variation of grief, anxiety, anger, restlessness, depression, fear. Trying to find some form, create some insight, beauty, and meaningful outcome to each day is reflected in the process of having to create a new version of the same image over and over again.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
"Every dove in the installation is the first and final draft of that version. Whether I was happy or proud with how it turned out, much like the day, I had to put it down and move on to the next one. The final installation becomes a calendar for a deeply surreal and profound period, but I’m reminded that with daily action the individual dove multiplies over time to create a flock."

#altarcall, Summer 2020

organized by Hanniyah Cross

with participating artists: Adrienne Ayers, Victoria Bayagich, Chanel Beebe, James Braddock, Hanniyah Cross, Corey Davis, bree gant, Lindsey Lewis, Danni Little, Gisela McDaniel, Cherise Morris, Takeisha Pack, Lynette, Tony Rave, Raven Shelman, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, Alejandra & Zoe Villegas

#altarcall is a public space created to honor those who have passed at the hand of police brutality as well as our loved ones unable to receive proper funeral rites due to covid-19. The space will be a place for Detroiters to release their frustration, grief, anger, joy, and reverence. #altarcall is also message to the ancestors, it’s a collective spiritual call to mobilize the warriors in our lineage.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
#altarcall will feature several different spiritual installations created by local artists and spiritual practitioners. Come join us as we honor and elevate our ancestors and those who have recently gone ahead.

CYRAH DARDAS is a Queer, ecological, intuitive artist and care worker living in Detroit /Waawiyaatanong MI. Dardas uses her art practice as a tool in remembering the forgotten networks between humans and the earth for the purpose of regulation and healing across species to restore a collective ecological body and heal. She is informed by they work in childcare, her stewardship of land and as a grower of plants, as a collaborator with youth, as a member of an artist cooperative, as a ceremonialist, as a space maker, and through her work with natural fibers, earth pigments and botanical inks. Their practice is deeply rooted in process + ritualizes art making as a tool for personal and collective liberation. They utilize botanicals, plants + minerals foraged + grown here to make my pigments + dyes by hand. I consider this process + interspecies communion that deeply informs her finished work. 

She is the Co- founder of Paper Street Press, a press and distribution network producing collaborative 2D zines that highlight the artistic practices of QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and Disabled BIPOC artists, the Lead Teaching Artist at People in Education and the Lead Curator at Room Project.

Cyrah Dardas

Weigh, Winter 2019

“Weigh is a multimedia installation examining the residual toll that the experience of abuse has on the body. How these incidents create trauma responses + coping mechanisms that manifested into volatile personalities and a distorted sense of self.

In this piece I move + make patterns with sand and glass considering them as elements of my body. Through this process I create structure + destroy it. I remind myself that regardless of their construction these elements are the same; One begets the other. Through this practice I confront the idea that I have been in circumstances of chaos and I have been in circumstances of calm. Because of that, I reflect that fluctuation in my body. 

My work speaks to the experience of dissociation. When things are too terrifying to acknowledge, the mind does what it has to to protect oneself. Things slip through mental cracks or incidences are deleted all together, buried deep into the psyche. While this phenomenon is a tool of survival and not inherently damaging, these gaps contribute to the distortion and confusion of self. 

Due to this repression, much of my mental energy has been spent trying to parse out what is true, what is real. As I interact with sand, I consider myself as infinite. I connect to a network of life that is beyond my body; which itself, often feels broken and small. In this network, I am huge, and overwhelming. This practice of inner sense cultivation develops an experience of power. Through this transformative process of connectivity, I find myself. “ - Cyrah Dardas

Manal Shoukair

Below Again, Summer 2019

Manal Shoukair (b. 1992, Los Angeles) is a Detroit based artist who uses performance, video, sculpture and site-specific installations to explore the hyphenated spaces of her multicultural identity, islamic spirituality, and contemporary femininity. Shoukair received her BFA from the College of Creative Studies. She has exhibited her work internationally, Zimbabwe and Mexico most recently. In 2018 she was awarded the Imre J Molnar Artistic Achievement Award and was widely recognized for her site-specific installation, Elevate, at Shylo Arts, a former synagogue and church in the University District of Detroit.

photo credit: Andrew M. Schwartz

Bana Kabalan

Chimera, Winter 2018

Curated by Nikki Roach and Olivia Gilmore

”My work intertwines elements of mythology from my Arabic heritage, and biological anatomy from my research practice. In genetics, chimeras are organisms that contain multiple sets of DNA from the fusion of fertilized eggs, or zygotes. In Eastern mythology, chimeras are creatures constructed from a mosaic of different anatomical forms.

In my work, I create powerful female beasts to reflect the way much of the mythology from my heritage has been centered on fear of the hidden, the unknown, the obscured. Hybrid creatures are found in Arabic culture, and are exhibited in my work through the story of Um Duwais.

Um Duwais, a female jinn, is a divine woman with donkey legs who is veiled in the shadows with her dark, long hair. She lures men into her cave with her beauty, by possessing those who have done wrong to others, and murders them. I’m interested in nuances of the occult and ways of signifying power through this archetype.

Materials in my work juxtapose mosaics typical of traditional Arabic art and taxidermied animals. My intent is to honor the lives of naturally deceased animals, while drawing attention to the materials our culture discards. The hybridization of organic and inorganic merges horizons into the chimera.”

photo credit: Gisela McDaniel

Amanda Carol

Belle Aisle; Burning Bush, Fall 2018

curated by Nikki Roach

BELLE AISLE; BURNING BUSH is a navigation from writing to conceptual engagement with performative structures to deconstruct and reconstruct public space. Amanda Carol takes the evocative objects of the weeping willow and the burning bush, each present in the initial setting of Virginia Woolf’s extended essay “A Room of One’s Own,” and through her preservation of their image deconstructs their object integrity to reframe the path and space womxn take.

By taking the conceptual and visual motifs of the opening setting to Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ new possibilities open up for confrontation; with nature, society and ourselves. By transforming and performing the branches of the weeping willow, into sculptural and moving image, Amanda Carol breathes new relevance to Woolf’s text as an affirmation for us womxn, that the presence we take is *resilience.* That resilience will take the form of serendipity rather than a form of struggle. We hope that when you cross the threshold into Room Project, the warmth of the burning red against the gray-blue of Detroit’s December makes you feel welcome here. You are welcome here.

photo credit: Christin Lee, Amanda Carol