HOUSE FROM DETROIT 8 MILE TOURS EUROPE
Featuring Greg Johnson, Harley K Brown, Tommy ‘Hitman’ Hearns, Underground Resistance, the Last Poets, the Packard Plant Project, Preach the Artist, Sovereign T, musicians from Detroit, Underground Resistance, the Community of Detroit 8 Mile and many more, this documentary follows the process of bringing over a house from Detroit and rebuild it in Europe.
`The White House`, 2016 is an homage to Detroit, while at the same time, it is an attempt of the American artist Ryan Mendoza to reconnect with his homeland after 20 years as an expatriot.
Thanks to the infinite help of Gregory L Johnson, who donated the Detroit house to the project, and thanks to Harley K Brown and Geert Verbeke, international artist Ryan Mendoza managed to deconstruct a two story Detroit house, place it in shipping containers and send it to Europe where it is now on tour.
Covered entirely in white paint, the house was reconstructed initially for Art Rotterdam February 11-14 2016.
It was viewed for an estimated 26,500 visitors.
In April the house will be placed on exhibition at the Verbeke Foundation in Belgium.
http://www.verbekefoundation.com/en/
The house, reminiscent of the house that Mendoza left behind when he left the United States, has an added weight as it is from the Detroit 8 mile area. Sensitive to the arguments of ruin-porn and poverty tourism, the house was painted entirely white, the roof and windows included, turning the house into an artwork, the white paint like a white veil, covering and shielding the house from an unwanted voyeurism.
If anything, this art project is an attempt to give value to voices and memories that would otherwise be forgotten. 80,000 other Detroit houses are set to be demolished in the near future.
Three additional facades from Detroit houses have also been sent to Europe and are in the process of being reconstructed. These houses are to be put on auction with proceeds from sales going to charity in the Detroit 8 mile area.
