Contemporary art in Detroit is seldom built through a single institution, aesthetic, or path into practice. It has emerged through neighborhoods, families, informal networks, self-directed study, and communities of exchange. Detroit Presents: Other Routes, the second edition of Season Fair’s annual exhibition platform, brings together Mobolaji Ayeni, bree gant, Jessica Nabongo, India Solomon, Miriam Uhura, and Oshun Williams, whose practices exemplify this tradition – not as an exception to contemporary art, but as one of its defining conditions. Detroit Presents will take place at Aleo – next door to the Shepherd.

The six artists in Other Routes work across different media and arrived at their practices through remarkably different experiences. What they share is how they arrived at art-making. They came through film, design and writing, community development, global travel and photography, and informal artistic networks rather than a common institutional pathway. Those different routes shaped not only how they learned to make art but also the materials they use. Pantry spices become pigment. Family photographs become visual narratives. Repurposed newspapers become painting surfaces. Fishing nets and animal hides become part of photographic works.