Tiff Massey Celebrates Detroit Culture and Style in Monumental Mixed-Media Installations
“I’ve Got Bundles and I Got Flewed Out (Green)” (2023). All images courtesy of the artist and Detroit Institute of Arts, shared with permission
Tiff Massey Celebrates Detroit Culture and Style in Monumental Mixed-Media Installations
April 23, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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From larger-than-life double-bobble hair bands to a wall of elaborate braids, Tiff Massey spotlights distinctive Detroit style. Trained as a metalsmith, the artist employs the power of material and scale to highlight the city’s neighborhoods and Black identity and culture.
7 Mile + Livernois, Massey’s solo exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts, takes inspiration from the crossroads at the heart of the city’s Black business and fashion district, where the artist grew up. The area will soon be home to a new arts and community space that Massey is spearheading in an effort to guide and celebrate local kinship.
“Everyday Arsenal” (2018)
Personal adornment is central to the artist’s expression, which she channels through jewelry, sculptures, and mixed-media assemblages to underscore Black style with a focus on her hometown. “Whatupdoe” and “Everyday Arsenal,” for example, respectively transform a contemporary chain necklace and silver rings into monumental installations, creating terrains of portal-like tunnels and interlocked angles.
The “ancestral flyness” of the artist’s parents and previous generations also provides a limitless well of inspiration. “How they adorned themselves has definitely been influential not only to how I adorn myself but also to the ideas that I have within the works,” Massey says in an interview for the DIA exhibition catalogue. “Detroiters, when we step outside, we step outside. We want people to see it. We want people to see us. And that has left a tremendous impression on me.”
7 Mile + Livernois continues through May 11. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Baby Bling” (2023)
“Whatupdoe” (2024)
Detail of “I’ve Got Bundles and I Got Flewed Out (Green)”
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