Dylan Miner: To Build Up Invincible
On view in DEPE Space May 19 — August 20, 2017
Dylan Miner’s DEPE Space residency seeks to re-engage anti-capitalist histories in the city and examine their relationship to the present and future by drawing upon the radical and working class history of pennants, banners, community spaces. and ideas of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies), a labor union and social movement whose hall was located just three blocks from MOCAD.
Throughout the exhibition the galleries will serve as a temporary community center featuring a reading room, a stage, and a printmaking studio filled with poetic banners and over a thousand wool pennants. Inspired by the Wobblies practice of incorporating art, song, poetry, and social activities into their organization, Miner and other artists, along with community groups, activists, and poets will use the DEPE Space community center to host a variety of free programs and engage the public in conversation about non-capitalist ways of being and imagining a better and more equitable world.
Dylan Miner is Director of the American Indian Studies Program and Associate Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. Miner is also adjunct curator of Indigenous art at the MSU Museum and a founding member of the Justseeds artists collective. He holds a PhD from The University of New Mexico and has published approximately sixty journal articles, book chapters, critical essays, and encyclopedia entries.
The DEPE (Department of Education and Public Engagement) Space residency and exhibition series presents interdisciplinary art that serves as a catalyst for learning and transformative conversation about complex social issues. DEPE Space offers opportunities to reflect upon the personal relevance of these topics and how they relate to communities in Detroit and throughout the world.
DEPE Space is supported by the MOCAD Leadership Circle and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Videography by Abigail Lynch and Bart Dangus
