Bio

Laura D. Gibson is a visual and lens-based media artist and independent curator in the city of Detroit. As a native Detroiter, her work focuses on her familial ties to the city in relation to memory, storytelling, space, displacement, and the archive. Gibson uses video, audio, and performance to dissect ways of maneuvering the city as a woman of color while documenting and examining the notions of intimacy in reflecting on space and the idea of home.

Artist Statement

In my photographic and video work, I have used images of my own family and our familial homes that have now been demolished that act as a cohesive unit to emphasize the idealization of attachment of person to place. Additionally, the attached angst and sense of loss cause me to realize that this story of losing home is not a rarity in this city, but an actual crisis.

My current body of work revolves around investigating and identifying spaces in Detroit that were once occupied by public buildings, residential housing, schools, and historical architecture that have been displaced by either blight, environmental conditions, or gentrification. Using photography, audio recordings, and film, I am turning my lens to communities and/or individuals who have been affected by the removal of these once existing spaces and/or residences through city planning and development, to tell their story from their perspective. I endeavor to understand the importance of racial and demographic representation in the archival record and understand Detroit's history and current record of displacement, in which, I theorize that it is through lack of documentation, i.e photo and film, that creates misinformation of community, complicates revisiting, and furthers gentrifies specifically low to mid-income residential housing, considering no archive is evident or readily found. I believe this absence in the record interrupts land recognition and disrupts community narratives in places like the city of Detroit, and ultimately leads to gentrification. By using the image and capturing creative ways of storytelling, individuals who have occupied these spaces reclaim ownership.