LaKela Brown’s inaugural solo presentation, From Scratch: Seeding Adornment, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), offers an exploration of nourishment practices across the African diaspora to cement Black culture as a conduit of liberation. From Scratch: Seeding Adornment celebrates the nature in which Black ancestral and cultural legacies have permeated across generations despite incredible odds. For this presentation, nourishment is embodied as a practice where plants, food and amulets are recognized for providing sustenance to and of a people. Across literal and conceptual frameworks in this exhibition, nourishment is a means to foster the growth and health of generations. Curated in two segments, Seeding and Adornment, the exhibition serves as a testament to the power of cultural signifiers to produce dialogue, reflection, and collective memory across contemporary Black life. 

Brown is the creator of intimate objects that evoke the rich legacy of Still Life, an art historical tradition that reflects the morality of individual life in contrast with the permanence of material culture towards building a legacy. From Scratch: Seeding Adornment highlights Brown’s practice as a dialogue with the Still Life art genre, wherein her works are cultural relics that suggest the presence of the Black body through seemingly ordinary objects. In segment one of this presentation, Seeding, the process of planting seeds in the soil to grow crops–is visualized through sculptural assemblage (still lifes) that serve as an ode to Black folks as stewards of the land. The works presented are ethnobotany studies, which address broader legacies of migration and are an homage to how memories are planted across generations within the African Diaspora. Seeding underscores the significance of plant life in the formation of Black identity.