Mobile Homestead is a permanent artwork by the late artist Mike Kelley (b. Detroit, 1954, d. Los Angeles, 2012). Located at MOCAD, it was born from ideas he developed over a lengthy period. The sculpture is a full-scale replica of the 1950s ranch-style home where he grew up. It is the only work of public art ever made by Kelley and the first major installation of his work in his hometown.

Kelley’s birthplace, Detroit, has always been a locus of his practice. For years, he had been considering buying the home where he had spent his childhood, located on Palmer Rd. in Westland, a Detroit suburb that primarily housed workers for the Big Three automakers. When the current owner refused to sell, Kelley produced a facsimile of the house on wheels. In collaboration with MOCAD and Artangle, he completed the first phase of Mobile Homestead in 2010.

Following the project’s first phase, Mobile Homestead made its maiden voyage from MOCAD in Detroit to the ‘mothership,’ his original home in the suburbs. Symbolically, the return trip reverses the ‘white flight’ of the 1960s, when the decline of the automobile industry and rising racial tensions drove the middle class from the city to the surrounding suburbs. Mobile Homestead used Michigan Ave. as the primary route for this voyage, making stops at historically, culturally, and personally significant sites for Kelley.

In respect of Kelley’s wishes, the home’s ground-floor rooms serve as a community gallery and gathering space, featuring exhibitions and programs created by and for a diverse public that reflect the local community’s cultural tastes and interests. The home’s white clapboard facade and front room can be detached from the rest of the structure and transported as a trailer to communities throughout Detroit, serving the public good.