Word of Mouth engages with the informal social and artistic networks of workers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Organized collaboratively by staff from across the museum, this group exhibition presents a shared space for a diverse range of mediums, levels of experience, and points of exploration. 

Word of Mouth calls attention to the implicit processes and relationships that bring each work together, gesturing toward the underlying ecosystems that support and stimulate the individuals powering the art world through their knowledge, labor, and material expertise. By echoing these networks within its decentralized and peer-to-peer approach to curatorial decision-making, Word of Mouth plays with the formality of organizational structures and celebrates everyday acts of collectivity and exchange. 

Placed at Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, this exhibition continues the communal mission of this work. Conceived by Kelley to host aesthetic experiments intrinsically related to community care, the Mobile Homestead has become a space in which deconstruction, experimentation, inclusivity, and more democratic technologies of display are rehearsed in opposition to the rational minimalism that defines expectations of the contemporary gallery.