(Detroit, MI – March 3, 2025) – Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), in partnership with The Kitchen, a New York City institution for experimental art and the avant-garde since 1971, proudly presents Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art, on view from May 2 to August 10, 2025. Spanning multiple galleries, this interdisciplinary presentation highlights Black contemporary artists’ impact on new media and cultivation of technology in arts and culture. A shared presentation across MOCAD and The Kitchen, Code Switch celebrates the power of collaboration across institutions in a pivotal moment across the cultural landscape. 

Driven by its mission, MOCAD’s artistic vision emboldens its programs to be responsive to the state of the world and reflect the best of contemporary practice. The Museum’s 2025 artistic program is motivated by inquiries into how artists interpret collective histories. The Spring presentation of Code Switch brings together artists from across the globe to showcase the varying expressions of technology and the internet’s impact on contemporary art, honoring Black cultural legacies in the field of new media and time-based practices. 

Code Switch, initiated by The Kitchen, debuted as an archival presentation in partnership with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, and explored the periods pre-1960 and 1960–1990 through the visions of twenty-four artists and creative technologists. Drawing its title from André L. Brock’s groundbreaking text Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (2020), this contemporary group exhibition explores the relationship between Black cultural production and the legacy of computation as a mode of machinic engagement and creative inspiration.

Building on the historic archival exhibition presented in its first iteration in Fall 2024, Code Switch at MOCAD expands as a contemporary group exhibition celebrating Detroit as an integral meeting place where Black people have always been, and continue to be, pioneers in new media art and technologies. The city’s deep history with sound—where techno was invented and popularized—offers a framework for exploring the interconnectedness of Black people, bodies, and machines.

“This is an exhibition that began with two questions: ‘What would the story of a networked Blackness, through and beyond the internet as we now know it, be if we told it as an avant-garde and experimental history?’ and ‘What would the art history of time-based media, new media, and digital technologies have looked like if it had included Black people into the canon from its inception?’” says Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen. 

Bringing together an intergenerational roster of over forty artists and counting, Code Switch unpacks the evolving relationship between body and machine, further shaped by the “age of the internet.” The exhibition spans a wide range of disciplines and materials, challenging and expanding the definition of “internet art.” In an era of accelerated mass communication, Black cultural production itself has been transformed, mutated, and modified through digital mediation. Surveying these shifts, Code Switch examines how artists and creative technologists disrupt the utopian promise of cyberspace as an equitable site of representation and liberation—interrogating its structures while also leveraging its generative force for inquiry and resistance.

“Collaborating with The Kitchen to present Code Switch here in Detroit is a vital opportunity to explore the fluidity of identity, language, and culture in a city that has long been a center of creative technologies. At MOCAD, we are committed to presenting exhibitions that challenge perspectives and inspire new ways of thinking, and Code Switch embodies that mission by creating space for reflection, exchange, and innovation.” says MOCAD’s Co-Director/Artistic Director Jova Lynne. 

This exhibition presents a group of artists that each represent a unique approach to making and celebrates the diversity of Black culture that has defined new media and experimental art. The artist list includes: American Artist, manuel arturo abreu, Minne Atairu, Xenobia Bailey, Neta Bomani, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, chukwumaa, Tony Cokes, Shawanda Corbett, Sofía Córdova, Taína Cruz, A.M. Darke, Stephanie Dinkins, L. Franklin Gilliam, Cameron A. Granger, fields harrington, Auriea Harvey, Juliana Huxtable, E. Jane, Devin Kenny, Kalup Linzy, Pope.L, Nandi Loaf, Pastiche Lumumba, Julie Mehretu, Marilyn Nance, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Ayodamola Okunseinde, Sondra Perry, Howardena Pindell, Venusloc (Vanessa Reynolds), Tabita Rezaire, Cameron Rowland, Kahlil Robert Irving, RaFia Santana, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Martine Syms, Wes Taylor, -{ john-henry }-[ thompson ], Muriel Tramis, Jack Whitten, and others to be announced. 

CREDITS

Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art is organized by Legacy Russell (Executive Director & Chief Curator) and Angelique Rosales Salgado (Curatorial Assistant)—with contributed research by Tsige Tafesse (2023-2024 Curatorial Fellow) and Kyla Gordon (2024-2025 Curatorial Fellow)—of The Kitchen; and by Jova Lynne (Co-Director and Artistic Director) and Isabella Nimmo (Associate Curator) of MOCAD. Exhibition design by Pacific. Visit mocadetroit.org/exhibitions to learn more and see the entire artist list. 

Code Switch is made possible through generous project-specific support from the Teiger Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, Global Council, Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council. 

ABOUT MOCAD

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) presents exhibitions and programs that explore the best of contemporary art, connecting Detroit and the global art world. MOCAD focuses on art as a means to nurture social change and human understanding, reflecting our community. We encourage innovative experimentation by artists, musicians, makers, cultural producers, and scholars to enrich all who participate and to educate visitors of all ages in the power of art. Whether from Detroit or worldwide, we welcome creative voices who can guide us to an equitable and inclusive future. We believe that art can change us, and it’s our responsibility to hold a space where challenge, acceptance, hope, and beauty can coincide.

ABOUT THE KITCHEN

Founded in 1971 as an artist-driven collective, The Kitchen today reaffirms and expands upon its originating vision as a dynamic cultural institution that centers artists, prioritizes people, and puts process first. Programming in a kunsthalle model that brings together live performances, exhibition-making, and public programming under one roof, The Kitchen empowers its audiences and communities to think creatively and radically about what it means to shape a multivalent and sustainable future in art. The Kitchen seeks to cultivate and hold space for wild thought, risky play, and innovative and experimental making, encouraging artists and cultural workers alike to defy boundaries and sending them into the world to remake art history and catalyze creative change.

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