2021 Virtual Artist Salon Series
In Spring 2021, Kresge Arts in Detroit produced the program’s first artist salon series featuring the 2020 Kresge Artist Fellows. Each program included a presentation about the artists' practices followed by a Q&A based conversation. This series is designed to showcase and advance the artists’ creative practices, provide space for an exchange of ideas and perspectives among all participants, and further the connection between Kresge Artist Fellows and the wider arts community.
Missed it? All salons were recorded! You may view all spring 2021 salon conversations below.
Past Artist Salons
Virtual Salon Series: Live Arts
Kia ix Arriaga is an Aztec dancer and multidisciplinary artist from Mexico. She works as a visual artist and cultural educator and is known for her multimedia installations, which include ceramics, drawing, traditional sand painting, and metalsmithing. For the past 20 years, Arriaga has installed Día de Muertos ofrendas in prestigious venues, including the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Arriaga is currently merging her skills as an installation artist and Aztec dancer to develop educational programs that explore Aztec culture through performance, music, art-making, and storytelling. An essay on her work is featured in the book “Essay’d 2: 30 Detroit Artists” (2017, Wayne State University Press).
Chris Jakob is a queer actor and playwright born and raised in Detroit. Holding a BA in theatre from University of Detroit Mercy, he is a multi-disciplinary performance artist focused on the creation of fresh, thought-provoking, experimental work. Jakob is proud to be an ensemble member of A Host of People (AHOP) and Shakespeare in Detroit as well as a Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit alumnus. He has performed at Detroit Repertory Theatre, The Ringwald Theatre, the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, Planet Ant, and Matrix Theatre, where he is also a teaching artist. Jakob’s work includes the world premiere of Cleopatra Boy, with AHOP in Detroit; previews of his new solo-performance-choreopoem, LOGOS, at Sidewalk Festival 2019; previews of anagoge. at Sidewalk Festival 2018; Cleopatra Boy with AHOP at FURY Factory Festival 2018 in San Francisco; the world premiere of Neither There, Nor Here with AHOP; the premiere and tour of his play, I, Too, Sing America, produced by the Michigan Opera Theatre; and artist residencies at Cleveland Public Theatre and the North American Cultural Lab (New York). Art is long, life is short.
Virtual Salon Series: Film + Playwriting
Andrew Morton is an award-winning playwright and theatre maker who creates socially engaged theatre both with and for vulnerable populations. His work has been produced across Michigan, the United States, and internationally. Originally from England, Morton holds a Master of Arts in community arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is currently based in Detroit, where he is a project manager at TimeSlips Creative Storytelling. Morton’s next project, Sofa Stories, created with young people who have experienced homelessness, will premiere in multiple spaces in Detroit in 2021.
Paige Wood is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, and creative consultant. Born in Detroit and working worldwide, Paige has produced and/or co-written a number of critically-acclaimed documentary and narrative films since the start of her freelance career in 2018. Currently, she serves as the supervising producer of five narrative-shifting multimedia projects supported by The Ford Foundation, and teaches as an adjunct instructor in the film program at Wayne State University. Paige is an alumna of Firelight Media’s 2018-2019 Impact Producer Fellowship cohort as well as a recipient of the Sundance Institute’s 2019 Knight Fellowship.
Brandon Walley is a filmmaker and curator based in Detroit, Michigan. He creates 16mm, Super 8mm, and digital films that explore the abstractions between humanity, ecology, industry, and technology. For over a decade, his films have been screened widely including Kunsthaus Graz (Austria), Strangloscope (Brazil), Rooftop Film (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Iowa City Experimental Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and more. Brandon has taught film production at various institutions including the College for Creative Studies, Lawrence Technological University, and YArts of Metro Detroit. Brandon has been Media City Film Festival’s Regional Artists’ Curator since 2008, is head of the festival Screening Committee, and is the organization’s Board Chair.
Virtual Artist Salon: Music
Mike Khoury is a Palestinian-American composer, improviser, and curator focused on experimental music, social research, and the Palestinian diaspora. Khoury’s focus has been on the establishment of the Arab-American avant-garde–documenting the movement’s intellectual heritage through presenting his own work, publishing on the topic, and presenting other artists’ work. Khoury has engaged in community building through his curation of the Entropy Studios space in Hamtramck (1998-2001) and Redford (2014-present), and the Entropy Stereo record label publishing artists such as Faruq Z. Bey and Wendell Harrison.VIRTUAL SALON SERIES: LIVE ARTS
Virtual Salon Series: Live Arts
bree gant is a multidisciplinary artist reimagining narrative. gant’s practice emerges from self-examination and social documentation, often in the form of ritual installation. She was a teaching artist with People In Education in 2016, where she trained in restorative practices and humanizing schooling. gant was awarded a 2017 fellowship with Detroit Narrative Agency for the short film Riding with Aunt D. Dot. In 2019, she performed with and became a member of the Detroit based dance collective, The Gathering. gant studied film at Howard University and lives in her hometown, Detroit.
Melanie Manos is a performance and visual artist who utilizes her body in absurd and precarious actions to convey everyday implications of economic insecurity and gender bias. She has performed internationally in Japan, England, and Canada (Museum London and Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity) as well as in the U.S. at venues such as Zuckerman Museum and the School of Architecture at Taliesin (formerly the Frank Lloyd School of Architecture). Manos was born in Detroit and earned a BA at UCLA while performing in the low and high culture hubs of Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she teaches, and is an Institute for the Humanities Summer 2020 faculty fellow.
Salakastar is a Detroit born and based actor, singer-songwriter, poet, and teaching artist working in theatre, television, film, and music. She earned her BFA and completed her classical acting training at the State University of New York at Purchase College. She is an artist-in-residence at Poetic Societies, an ensemble member at A Host of People, and is in the touring company of I, Too, Sing America at the Michigan Opera Theatre. She is a founding member of iii Sisters, a Detroit-based feminist writing ensemble. Salakastar is the recipient of a 2018 Gilda Award in Live Arts awarded by Kresge Arts in Detroit. Salakastar is set to release her debut album, All Blue: Part One (Majorelle!), in 2020.
Virtual Salon Series: Dance + Performance
Ajara Alghali A Detroit native, Ajara Alghali is a performance artist and thought leader at the intersection of dance and representation. Her artistic practice is in the classical West African discipline, blending her cultural grounding with expressive body movements. Alghali believes that music and dance are important modes of communication needed to nurture individuals, disseminate knowledge, and advance the culture. Through her artistry, she engages in the vital work of cultivating dancers and culture-keepers to create a community of stewards of the rich bodily history of West African dance. She is co-founder of TeMaTe Institute for Black Dance and Culture, which is actively re-framing traditional African dance as part of the classical dance canon. Alghali, holding a Master of Urban Planning from Wayne State University, is a cultural worker, urban planner, and anthropologist all in one. Her work is a fusion of life experiences from her Sierra Leonean-American roots and focuses on the connection between African people throughout the diaspora. Her cultural identities and perspectives define her guiding philosophy: there is inherent value in traditional practices and the informal ways people build community and share their history.
Karilú Alarcón Forshee was raised in Juárez, México. She began her artistic education at a young age at La Academia Municipal de Arte and has been performing ever since. Forshee is an interdisciplinary performing artist with a degree in theater arts and English-Spanish translation from the University of Texas (2009). She has been a Detroit-based performer and teaching artist since 2011, and a member of A Host of People theater company since 2013. Forshee currently works as a teaching artist for Living Arts Detroit, University Musical Society, and Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit.
Michael Manson is a teaching artist, dancer, and choreographer specializing in the street dance forms of popping, locking, house, and Detroit Jit. In 2015, he was a featured dancer on the television program So You Think You Can Dance, which showcased his jit expertise. Manson was the primary choreographer for the Detroit Pistons dance crew, D-Town, and his teaching credits include master classes at Arizona State University, the Columbia College Chicago Dance Center, and Broadway Dance Center. He has taught workshops and performed internationally in Paris, France, and La Paz, Bolivia.
Debra J. White-Hunt A Detroit native, Debra J. White-Hunt has danced all of her life–socially, spiritually, professionally, and purposefully. She has traveled the world teaching, dancing, and choreographing works for all ages and many cultures to express passion, artistry, and emotion–with a message. White-Hunt has choreographed at least 50 ballets and produced and directed more than 100 dance concerts. She has also created educational tools used for the training of dance students. White-Hunt has been commissioned to create her works on stage, television, film, and video, and she has received numerous national and local awards for her excellence in the arts and education. She is co-founder and artistic director of Detroit-Windsor Dance Academy.