All things good, bad, trendy, or otherwise must come to an end, some sooner rather than later.
On Monday, the Imani Immersive Gallery in Ferndale announced its permanent closure on social media. The Black-owned gallery opened in May of this year, continuing the projection mapping trend with an underwater-themed display and a “floating maze.”
A message on the gallery’s Instagram page reads, “We Are Permanently Closed. From my family to yours, we send a sincere thank you to any and everyone that supported our immersive gallery. To those that were reintroduced to childlike laughter, thank you for allowing us to be a part of that. Keep going through life experiencing magic......we’ll see you in the stars.”
The same message appears on the gallery’s website.
The “immersive art” trend has been polarizing, impressing some folks while others, myself included, have reduced it to looking at a drive-in movie projected on four walls. The fad’s popularity in Detroit was undeniable at one point, though it seems to have died down.
In 2022 we got two “immersive Van Gogh” exhibits with Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience and Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit Detroit, which had a clusterfuck of delays and a secret location that was later revealed to be Lighthouse ArtSpace in the former Harmonie Club Building.
Lighthouse Immersive, which ran Lighthouse ArtSpace, has several locations around the globe and later brought Immersive King Tut, Immersive Klimt, and Immersive Disney to Detroit.
Immersive Disney ended in October and (thankfully) no future exhibits have been announced for the space yet. The Lighthouse ArtSpace Detroit website has also disappeared and when we called the automated number listed for the site, Detroit’s name was not listed as an option.
A message left with Lighthouse Immersive’s PR agency was not returned.
When Imani Immersive Gallery first opened, owner Lauren Fresh told Metro Times she wanted to create a space where people could free their inner child.
“As I experienced immersive art, I wanted to create the feeling that it made me feel for others,” she said. “I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression and it helps me decompress. What’s a better tranquil experience than an immersive gallery?”
The gallery also had a podcast studio for rent and was often used as an event space for private events and local business pop ups.
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