Loralee Grace has sold everything she owned to live nomadically three times.
“Learning my taxes in America mostly fund an incredibly bloated military, policing, and prisons as opposed to social services fueled my desire to leave after art school due to my opposition to the violent militaristic overarching culture,” the Detroit-based painter says. “The way I traveled, I wasn’t, or was barely making any money — one way to not have to pay taxes.”
She didn’t carry much with her on her travels but she always had mini art supplies to paint the landscape and people she encountered.
The more she traveled and met the Indigenous people of those lands, she realized environmental issues like poor air quality are residual effects of colonialism. This inspired her to start a series in 2015 called Futurelands depicting landscapes like Turkey’s Pamukkale thermal springs and the sandstone canyons of Wadi Rum (aka Valley of the Moon) in Jordan.
Paintings from her travels are part of her solo show Futurelands, on view at Detroit Contemporary until February 25. For Grace, a “futureland” is where the land is returned to Indigenous people.
“The environmental issues we have are directly connected to taking the land away from Indigenous people,” she says. “I lived in Melbourne when the 2020 bushfire crisis happened. I wasn’t in any of the places where the fire took place but we got a significant amount of smoke in the city multiple times and I learned that had they left the land sovereignty in the hands of First Nations people, they wouldn’t have had this problem.”
Often, Grace’s oil and watercolor paintings depict people wearing futuristic air filtration devices on their heads that look like astronaut helmets. In 2021, a painting of a woman she met in Uganda with solar panels and air filters was used on billboards around Detroit for a campaign against environmental racism.
In Futurelands, a painting of Pamukkale shows three mysterious figures wading in the hot spring’s misty waters as if searching for a civilization that’s long been lost. They wear what look like space suits, one of them clutching her pregnant belly, contemplating what life will be like for her child on a planet where you can’t breathe the air.
Above the future wasteland scene is a Turkish rug pattern. Grace, who is white, often infuses patterns relevant to the culture she is painting in her work that she finds through research. She sees her work as cultural appreciation rather than appropriation.
“I hope people can see that, and so far in my conversations people can tell how much care and thought I put into it,” she says, noting that she donates proceeds from her sales to organizations like the Indigenous-led non-profit Cultural Survival.
A painting of a Nepali woman Grace met on her travels has her wearing an air filter decorated with solar panels and baby spider plants, which are thought to be natural air purifiers. Because Grace travels as a low-budget nomad, she often finds herself in remote villages, which she says gives her more authentic chances to connect with local people.
“Kathmandu has some of the worst [air] pollution in the world,” she notes, adding, “I’m more concerned with helping the people affected by pollution than trying to stop it or educate people, because we can’t stop it or change it ourselves,” she says.
Her friend Eradajere Oleita taught her this prospect. Oleita is a Detroit-based environmental activist who started the Chip Bag Project to upcycle potato chip bags into sleeping bags for the homeless.
Grace painted a portrait of Oleita for the show with a glass filter encasing her head and the skyline of Detroit and her hometown of Lagos behind her.
Grace’s travels have taken her to 27 countries including New Zealand, Nepal, Iceland, Australia, India, Turkey, Montenegro, Jordan, and “Israel/occupied Palestine.” For now, the Grand Rapids native is based in Detroit where she’s lived for four years — the longest she’s stayed in one place in the past 15 years.
Futurelands is on view at Detroit Contemporary until February 25. The opening reception is set for Saturday, February 10 from 6-10 p.m.
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