The Mobile Homestead was born from ideas that Mike Kelly (b. Detroit, 1954, d. Los Angeles, 2012) developed over a lengthy period. Kelley’s birthplace of Detroit has always been a locus of his practice. For years, he entertained buying the home where he spent his childhood, located on Palmer Rd. in Westland, a suburb of Detroit 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 this 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 increasing racial tensions caused an exodus of the middle class from the city to the surrounding suburbs. The Mobile Homestead used Michigan Ave. as the primary route for this voyage, making stops at historically, culturally, and personally significant sites for Kelley.

Read more about the history of the Mobile Homestead.