Water is a life giver. Without water, no life could persist. She is a creator with the power to destroy. Her rage can wash away whole cities in the frenzy of tsunami waves. Before we know our mothers, we know water. She is the first sound we hear in our mother’s womb before we come into life on this planet.
It seems fitting then, that for its final act, Norwest Gallery of Art is choosing to honor the spirit of water. The Black-woman owned space in Grandmont-Rosedale is preparing to close its doors with a final exhibit titled, Water, on display now until Dec. 21. December will mark eight years since the gallery first opened.
“I’m tired,” Norwest Gallery owner and artist Asia Hamilton tells Metro Times, citing financial strain. “It made sense financially to shut this down. And that is what’s driving me. If I go on sentiment alone, I would not be able to close this space… We’ve shown hundreds, and I’m not exaggerating, hundreds of artists have come through here. We’ve had local celebrities, international talent and celebs, our government officials. This has definitely been an anchor and beacon of light in the community. It’s time to wrap it up.”
Water was curated by Doug Jones, a self-professed water nerd.
“It’s all interconnected, just like water,” he says. He’s talking about the pieces in the exhibit, but perhaps he means everything — the greater ecosystem of all life on this planet, human or otherwise. He continues, “Our rain is our ocean, is our river, is our stream.”
The gallery is permeated by the sound of a shifting sonic installation by Maro J. Kayira and Ethan Marshall Cohen that reacts to the number of people, movement, and sounds in the space. The pair created the installation by embedding submersible microphones in ice to record the sound of it melting. Rather than a simple loop, the installation will change as it interacts with gallery visitors.
“From the minute I push play, our presence in this space is contributing to what we’re hearing,” Jones explains. Going back to his idea of everything being interconnected, he says about the installation, “Even as this water evaporates, so to speak, it’s going to visit us again in another form.”
Other featured artists include Hamilton, Shirley Woodson, Senghor Reid, Ijania Cortez, LaPorcshia Winfield, Gyona Rice, Oshun Williams, Joe Cazeno III, Ian Solomon, and more, across paintings, illustrations, photography, video, and sculptures.
Ijania Cortez tells us her painting “Lusteration” is about baptism, recreating the feeling when a person comes into contact with water, and how it changes their spirit.c
Like water, Hamilton has had to be fluid in the face of obstacles — like a stream rolling gracefully around the rocks and debris in her path — to keep the gallery open.
The Yoruba Orisha Yemoja, a motherly deity of the ocean, is present. Not only figuratively, but literally in the many depictions of cowrie shells across the show and in Nawili’s sculptural collage dedicated to her.
“I’ve been threatening to close the gallery for years,” she tells Metro Times. “But every now and then we’d get a lump sum of money and then it’d be like, oh, we can keep going… We wouldn’t have survived this long without [community support]. But we needed more support. It was just enough support to pay the bills, not to pay me. I was still out here freelancing. I’ve also had full-time jobs while I’ve had this business.”
She had planned to close the gallery back in 2024 after having to pay the gallery’s rent and bills out of her own pocket. Then she got a call about hosting a campaign party for former presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris.
After three visits by Harris’s campaign team (including about 20 secret service agents checking her internet and phone connections) and being sworn to secrecy, it finally hit Hamilton that Harris was actually coming to Norwest.
“It wasn’t so much that she was running for president. She was the Vice President of the United States of America. You know what I’m saying?” Hamilton reminisces. “They shut this whole block down. They had helicopters and secret service people. You could not come over here at all.”
She continues, “Mind you, a week before this, I had just prepped Simone [the gallery assistant] and told her that I’m closing the gallery. That week, a few days before Kamala came in, someone got engaged in the gallery… We done did everything. We done had weddings, baby showers, and repasses. They’ve seen it all right here at Norwest. So that happened, and now [Harris] came. So I was like, all right God, whatchu trying to say? You said keep it open one more year? Bet.”
When she first opened the gallery, Hamilton wanted to create a space for emerging Black artists to showcase their work, which she felt Detroit was lacking at the time.
“I had been through so much as an artist coming along, just being just turned down,” she remembers. “Back then, you’d go into galleries with your portfolio, and you either had to have a following, which was not [on] Instagram, or know somebody. You had to create a following based on your own footwork. So when I started the space, there weren’t any spaces really for emerging artists. There was a huge gap there, and since then that gap has been filled, and not just by Norwest. There’s so many other spaces that are now showcasing emerging and contemporary Black artists.”
She adds, as a final thought, “I would’ve loved to have kept the space open. But we can’t just keep the space open on love alone. We need to support as a community, our art spaces, our institutions, and not just the [Detroit Institute of Arts] that gets paid by the millage.”
Though Norwest Gallery is closing, Hamilton plans to do pop up art installations and continue her Womxnhouse Detroit artist residency. She is also hosting a summit at Art Basel Miami Beach for arts administrators in December.
Norwest Gallery of Art is located at 19556 Grand River Ave., Detroit and is open noon-6 p.m., Friday and Saturdays, and noon-4 p.m. Sundays for viewings of Water.
Editor’s Note: This writer was a featured artist of Womxnhouse Detroit 2022.
This article was published in conjunction with Midbrow.