Detroit Artists Market Presents: Hot DAM!
This year’s Hot DAM! features over 40 local artists and a vibrant range of work including painting, sculpture, fiber, mixed media, and more. The exhibition began with an open call to DAM members and local artists. From these submissions, nationally renowned curator and scholar Dr. Kelli Morgan selected the final works for the show.
Dr. Morgan is the Founding Executive Director of the Black Arts Archive and a leading voice in progressive museum practices. Her curatorial work centers anti-racist strategies and community engagement. She regularly trains staff and emerging curators at institutions across the country, and her leadership continues to inspire transformative change in the art world.
“HOT DAM explores the visceral power of materiality in contemporary Detroit art. This exhibition highlights how artists across the city are pushing the boundaries of texture—scorching, soft, slick, and raw—to evoke memory, resistance, and transformation. Through a tactile language shaped by Detroit’s industrial legacy and creative resilience, these works invite viewers to feel rather than simply observe. In the hands of these artists, material becomes message—fraught with urgency, humor, heat, and the ineffable poetry of lived experience.”
Participating Artists:
Susan Aaron-Taylor, William Bingham, Courtney Blackett, Gigi Boyd, Jules Briggs, Tsiuri Chachua, Chris Charron, Amelia Currier, Ashara Ekundayo, Jan Filarski, Jasmine Graham, Paulette Gutierrez, Talese Harris, Hailey Howe, Meighen Jackson, Tohru Kanayama, Dawnice Kerchaert, Josh Lewallen, Martine MacDonald, Megan Major, Valerie Mann, Jennifer Maples, William Matthews, Michael McNeil, Alice Moss, Michael Nagara, Robert O’Banner, Sebastian Perkins, Robert Perrish, Jason Phillips, Yvette Rock, Nancy Rodwan, Lawrence Sekulich, Reggie Singleton, Martine Skalski, Robin Speth, Claudia St. Peter, JeRon Strozier, Vasundhara Tolia, Trotter, Lindsay Tyler, Deborah Walters, and Danielle Whitehead.
Key Details:
Location: Detroit Artists Market
Address: 4719 Woodward, Detroit MI 48201
Date & Time: July 26th, 2025 1-5pm
Ribbon cutting 1pm
With over ten years of experience as a curator, educator, and activist in the cultural sector, Dr. Kelli Morgan is widely known as a leader in progressive museum practice whose work develops and advances anti-racist approaches to art curation, fundraising, and community engagement. She regularly trains staff and emerging curators at institutions worldwide. She is a leading and influential voice in championing museum practices that are safer for and more responsible to individuals and communities of color.
A native Detroiter, Morgan received her doctorate in African American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, after receiving her BA in the discipline at Wayne State University. Throughout her career she has remained steadfast in her commitments to Black communities and visual cultures, using her time as a curator of American art to advance curatorial methodologies & interpretive strategies that centered African Diasporic ways of knowing.
She is currently the Founding Executive Director of the Black Artists Archive, a new nonprofit arts organization in Detroit, MI that fosters a nurturing environment for creativity, exhibition, learning, and the preservation of Black art history and visual culture.