Season Fair Announces
Detroit Presents: Other Routes

The second edition of Season Fair’s annual exhibition platform brings together six artists whose practices reflect the ways contemporary art is made in Detroit.

DETROIT, MI. (August 11, 2026) — 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.

Presented as part of Season Fair, Detroit’s nonprofit contemporary art fair, Other Routes is on view September 11–13, 2026, at Aleo, adjacent to The Shepherd, alongside eleven galleries from five cities. Admission includes access to Detroit Presents: Other Routes.

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.

“A fair shouldn’t only bring galleries to a city – it should create opportunities for the artists who already call that city home,” said Amani Olu, Founder and Curatorial Director of Season Fair. “Detroit Presents is our commitment to investing directly in Detroit artists, presenting their work alongside leading galleries and introducing them to collectors, curators, and institutions from across the country.”

Exhibiting Artists

Mobolaji Ayeni

Mobolaji Ayeni presents Iya Ibeji 2, drawing on mythology, family photographs, cultural objects, and personal history to explore memory, identity, and bonds that extend across generations and continents. A Nigerian American visual artist, designer, and writer, Ayeni creates intimate narratives grounded in family, Blackness, and human connection.

bree gant

bree gant presents self-myth, a body of mixed-media work rooted in film, printmaking, and performance. Inspired by archives, gardens, ritual, and the experience of care, gant explores how the body holds memory and produces knowledge, creating works that move between personal history and collective remembrance.

Jessica Nabongo

Jessica Nabongo, widely recognized as the first Black woman to visit every country in the world, presents works from a photography practice shaped by nearly two decades of global travel. Since 2005, she has built an archive of more than 80,000 photographs documenting the people and places she encountered throughout her journeys. In these works, she incorporates textiles, dried botanicals, glass marbles, fishing nets, and animal hide into selected photographs, transforming documentary images into sculptural photographic works.

India Solomon

India Solomon presents works on paper that function as maps of migration, memory, and belonging. Raised on Detroit’s west side and shaped by years of work in community development, Solomon creates abstractions using handmade pigments and salvaged materials – including turmeric from her pantry and leftover paint from the palette – bringing artistic practice into the rhythms and materials of everyday life.

Miriam Uhura

Miriam Uhura presents The Hero’s Day Off, a figurative painting that considers rest as an act of care and resistance. A self-taught painter from Highland Park, Uhura creates portraits rooted in emotional presence rather than idealization, exploring Black womanhood through vulnerability, tenderness, and quiet strength.

Oshun Williams

Oshun Williams presents new work from his ongoing family series, incorporating repurposed newspapers, buttons, bows, floral elements, and chenille patches. Begun after his grandfather's death, the series connects personal remembrance to the history of the Great Migration, using everyday materials to preserve family memory and celebrate the resilience of Black families.

Supporters

Season Fair is made possible through the support of lead partners Jennifer Gilbert and ARTPOWER. Community partners College for Creative Studies, eugenie, Planning Alternatives, Modern Ancient Brown Foundation, and Gretchen and Ethan Davidson join the fair in supporting Season’s mission to foster engagement with contemporary art.

Location

the Shepherd
1265 Parkview Street
Detroit, MI 48214

Fair Hours

• Friday, September 11
  VIP Preview: 2 p.m. – 8 p.m.

• Saturday, September 12
  11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

• Sunday, September 13
  11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Tickets

VIP Preview: $100
General Admission: $40

Tickets are available here.

Admission includes access to Detroit Presents: Other Routes.

All works included in Detroit Presents: Other Routes will be available for purchase throughout Season Fair.

About Season

Season Fair is an annual contemporary art fair held in Detroit, organized by Season Contemporary, a nonprofit cultural initiative focused on building market infrastructure for artists, galleries, and cultural workers. The fair's inaugural edition generated $90,000 in verified art sales, supported 25 local jobs, and produced more than $360,000 in total economic impact. Produced by Olu & Company.

Press Contact

Aleiya Lindsey
Olu & Company
aleiya@olucompany.com
(313) 506-8699

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