Tiff Massey’s DIA Show Shines a Spotlight on the Culture of Black Adornment

‘I’m trying to seduce you,’ Massey says

Published: May 28, 2024 | Last Updated: May 28, 2024

It’s not that Detroit artist Tiff Massey wants audiences to find her work inscrutable. She simply wants visitors checking out her upcoming Detroit Institute of Art exhibit, “7 Mile + Livernois,” to walk in uninfluenced.

So, ahead of the exhibit’s early May 2024 opening, the Black queer artist avoids telling Pride Source exactly what to expect. She’s mum about the scope of the exhibit, including the size of the pieces that will be on display (she’s known for creating large-scale metalwork pieces) and what she’s trying to express with the artworks she’s painstakingly created. “That’s not up to me,” she says in late April. “I’m trying to seduce you. I can tell you that.”

"Tiff Massey is an internationally recognized artist, but has never had a major museum exhibition in her hometown of Detroit,” says DIA curator Katie Pfohl. “This is a chance to celebrate one of the city's most accomplished artists and also give Tiff the platform to create her most ambitious work to date. Tiff's commitment to the city of Detroit, her technical ability and her innovative art practice merging metalsmithing, installation art and community work makes her an ideal artist to showcase at the DIA."

At the time of this writing, ahead of the exhibit opening, Massy, 42, seems a little frustrated with promotional efforts, and not because there’s a lack of interest. Talking to journalists about her artwork has become common in the weeks leading up to the opening, and she’s happy to talk about the exhibit and her background, but only in general terms.

An art installation created by Tiff Massey. Courtesy photo

“The objects referencing my childhood in the exhibit, for example, talk about labor. They talk about being nurtured, about love, essentially — and in some of that, there could be pain,” she says, hesitantly. “It’s more interesting to see what everybody else feels, essentially because I’m literally trying to talk to you about a show… but I’m giving you nothing, intentionally.”

“If I told you ‘This is what the work is about,’ that might not be your interpretation,” she explains. “That’s what is the beautiful thing about contemporary [art] — you can have multiple conversations about the same thing, and it could be something just very simple but still very, very loaded in context.”

Since becoming a professional artist in the early 2000s, Massey’s art practice has evolved from unique jewelry pieces to encompassing metal sculpture work and larger-than-life public art installations, all inspired by the adornment practices she has witnessed in Detroit and that have been an important part of West African and Black American cultures throughout history. One piece in this exhibit is a sprawling sculpture installation called “Whatupdoe,” created from steel architectural beams. Massey applied her metalsmithing skills to craft the 13,000 pounds of metal into the form of a giant necklace.

The “7 Mile + Livernois” exhibit is the “most ambitious exhibition that the DIA has ever done for a Detroit artist,” says Pfohl, who adds, “Tiff Massey is also the youngest artist ever to receive a solo show at the DIA. This is also the first time in many years that the museum has commissioned an artist to create work specifically for the DIA, in dialogue with the museum’s spaces and collection.”

What Massey can tell curious art enthusiasts is that her work at the DIA — an exhibit a year in the making that has taken months of work planning organizing, transporting and assembling hundreds of pieces — is a reflection of how Detroit and its people imprinted on her as she grew up near Seventh and Livernois (the Avenue of Fashion district).

Massey didn’t set out to forge a career as a full-time artist. In fact, she started her higher education journey pursuing a biology degree with a minor in chemistry at Eastern Michigan University, and though she did receive her bachelor’s of science in the field, a career in science wasn’t her destiny — the “monotony” of her studies led her to a different path. “I would take metalsmithing classes to break up that monotony of studying all the time and having to memorize all these formulas and things,” she explains. She relished the opportunity to “just work with my hands, and to just make the things that were in my head.”

Soon, Massey was channeling childhood memories into her jewelry creations — how her parents would adorn themselves and how people in her neighborhood presented themselves in public. Massey also points to 1980s jewelry designs and the era of “bling,” when jewelry pieces often included platinum and layers of diamonds as inspirations for some of her scaled-up sculptures. “I watched these styles change, and growing up in Detroit, you understand that you don’t want anybody to have the same outfit on as you when you go out to church or to a concert, or just stepping outside,” she says. “This work focuses on how Black people, specifically, adorn themselves. And it’s why I named the exhibit ‘7 Mile + Livernois.’”

In 2011, Massey became the first Black woman to earn a Master of Fine Arts in metalsmithing from the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art. Soon, the global art world was taking notice, and Massey started racking up accolades and earning awards like the 2015 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship, two John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awards, and the 2019 Art Jewelry Forum’s Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant. She’s held artist residences in Detroit, Greece and France, and her work has been exhibited widely across the U.S. and throughout the world.

“7 Mile + Livernois” spans four galleries in the DIA’s contemporary wing, which have been deinstalled as the museum embarks on a restructuring of its contemporary art collection. “This provided a unique opportunity for an artist to respond to the space and collection,” Pfohl notes. “Tiff’s work will be on view while we finalize our plans for our new contemporary wing. We also see the show as a conversation that will unfold over time, through programming and education, and we wanted to be sure that the youth we serve through our education programs, especially school groups, had ample time to see the exhibition.”

When Massey isn’t working on her art, she’s often putting in hours as a commercial real estate developer, turning forgotten buildings into places that nurture the soul of the local community. A new community art center project focuses on a large building in the Avenue of Fashion district that Massey is transforming into a “white box” space she hopes will become home to art projects, including large-scale artworks like the ones she creates, and as a community gathering space for unique events.

“It’s a very interesting experience to hear the comments of people living near the site,” she says. “People who thought they would never see anything like this in the neighborhood. To me, this development is part of my art practice, too.”

Massey observes that while Detroit is the first American UNESCO City of Design (a designation that recognizes a city's design legacy and commitment to promoting cultural and creative industries), local developers often focus on rehab projects using the cheapest materials available and on speed versus putting thought and intentionality into the work. “There’s not a lot of investment into what we’re actually adding to the landscape,” she says. “There was so much money and investment poured into the history of the city of Detroit, and to see the juxtaposition of that — that none of these [new] structures are really gonna hold up like some of the historic structures. I want to see what can be added of value, outside of just recycling a building, essentially.”

Massey hopes to have the space rolling by September, Detroit’s “Month of Design.” In the meantime, she’s focused on her DIA show, which will stay on exhibit for a full year, through May 11, 2025. Ahead of the opening, Massey said she was “excited about the show,” which “invites us all to celebrate our collective identity, ancestral flyness and beauty,” according to DIA press materials.

“This is the most ambitious exhibition that I’ve had to date and yeah, I want people to just come out,” she says. “I work very, very hard, and I just want to share what I’ve been doing, what I’ve been planning for over a year.”