Detroit Sends Mike Kelley’s ‘Mobile Homestead’ to Los Angeles

Mike Kelley, Mobile Homestead. Photo: courtesy the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, usually stationed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, is finally living up to its name. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the public art installation, the late artist’s final major work, has left the Motor City for a one month stay at the the Geffen Contemporary at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

The white clapboard home on wheels is a near-perfect replica of the home where Kelley grew up in Detroit, in a working-class neighborhood largely populated by auto workers. The artist intended the piece, which travels on a large trailer, to move from city to city, hosting art exhibitions, educational programming, and social outreach initiatives.

Tomorrow the trailer will take part in the Los Angeles Poverty Department‘s Walk the Talk parade. The homestead will showcase portraits by Brian Dick of poverty activists from the city’s impoverished Skid Row neighborhood, as well as a timeline of Skid Row history. Mr. Brainwash has also contributed portraits of those being honored at the parade.

Among the events schedules for the Mobile Homestead residency, which runs through June 28, are a meal preparation workshop from Local United Network in Combating Hunger, a blood drive from American Red Cross Blood Services, and a Rent Control Tenant Meeting hosted by LA Human Right to Housing Project/Community Action Network.


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