Ian John Solomon

We’re Live!!! 🎉🥳 Episode 1 of Amplify Outside podcast is out now! You’ll meet the host, Ian John Solomon (@ian.outside ) and hear @cityofdetroit director of Sustainability Tepfirah Rushdan tell her story of sustainability in Detroit and why the D is the place to be for environmentalism! ✊🏾🌲

Image: “Mask Untitled” (2024) Self Portrait Object: “Mask 1” (2024) Hand blown clear + mirrored glass beads, Ceramic Fragment, Dried Moss, Leather, Chicken wire Stepping deeper into embodiment of land, camouflage and adornment; The mask seeks discretion while positioning itself as an object of desire. Digital portrait?? it’s giving 2021

“ Cowrie, 35.98438° N, 78.07888° W (Bass Plantation)” 20”x30”. Last week to see the work up for Radial Survey with @silvereyecenter !

Join us today, Jan 20 for a virtual conversation with all six artists of Radial Survey Vol.4. As we look forward to this thoughtful exchange, let’s learn more about each artist! Ian John Solomon (@1anjohn ) is a Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist-journalist whose lens-based practice explores self, ancestry, community, land, and ecology. Ian writes: “Through the body, land, and spirit, we can travel time, interrogate complex histories, and imagine future realities. It’s in recognition of a severance within that Holy Trinity that my work functions as a balm and request to reckon with the Black American relationship between the three. Weaving narratives personal to political, I utilize lens -based mediums, craft, performance in the natural world to explore identity, ancestral memory, ritual, and environmental injustice. Through this interdisciplinary exploration, the body, land, and spirit alchemize in search of reconciliation with the past, present, and future of Black place in nature.” 📅 Virtual program on Tuesday, Jan 20, 6pm 🔵 Free and open to all 🔗 Register via the link in our bio Radial Survey Vol.4 is supported by a grant from @leonianfoundation Image 1: Ian John Solomon, Camp Van Dyke, 2024 Image 2: Ian John Solomon artist portrait. Image credit: @jayefrances_imagery

Places I Can Be (2025) Steel, instant film

“Brother’s Keeper, Waves on Swim” (2025) Had the pleasure of getting back into the portrait studio for @wethepeople_actionfund @gingerroot313 “Man, Speak Up” campaign. Around the same time @liveannlove was kind enough to tap me for a presentation of my visual & social practice to their class at MSU as they explored Black Masculinities. It’s not a theme I spoke directly to very often, but grateful for the way these two opportunities made me excavate the undercurrent of Black queer manhood and land in the work over the years. Loved this shot, had to collage it. 1. “Brother’s Keeper, Waves on Swim” (2025) 2. Digital portrait for @wethepeople_actionfund styled by @sydbeann @thedueydealer 3-10, various works in the vault

“True enchantment is a kind of suspension of ‘knowing’ that takes place inside a space of deep fascination with the unfamiliar. Experiences like this can be stumbled upon or sought out, rejected or embraced, but they always—even if only for a moment—evoke a childlike wonder of boundlessness. In the summer of 2025, Detroit-based artists KESSWA and Ian Soloman came together to make an exhibition that meditates on the creative possibilities of opacity as presented by writer and poet Edouard Glissant.” Ashley Cook interviews KESSWA and Ian Soloman about the philosophical approach to their collaborative exhibition CO-ALCHEMY Check out the interview at n ~ PUBLISHED TODAY! December 15, 2025

SOLAR FIELD: VAN DYKE / LYNCH Much of the practice has been an act of returning to/ excavating/ archiving my maternal family neighborhood of Van Dyke / Lynch on the East Side as a process of place based veneration. When it was announced this neighborhood would be the first to become the country’s first urban solar farm, two of my worlds collided. In ‘City Wild’ ( @playdetroit 2024) we flooded the homes of Van Dyke Lynch with waterfalls of the U.P., made urban cabins out homes now long gone, reimagined redlined legacies of outdoor recreation and made monuments out of electrical utility — investigating the intersection of people, place, policy and environment. I’ve been asking what it means for Detroit, the Blackest city in America, to exist in arguably the most climate resilient region on the globe. How past, present and future of my people in this place will be rectified. Today, the answers are being woven into the foundation of the question. More specific questions have emerged…This neighborhood, born in many ways for the extraction of labor, now being reborn for extraction of a different kind. Frankly— It’s all too much and too fast— so for now I’ll map the space, archive what stands today, remember what lead us to this space and account for its future. I am grateful for the grid form as a chance to make sense of it all while we sort the rest out. 1. Solar Field: Van Dyke / Lynch. ( 2025, Instant film, steel, 13”x13”) on view at @silvereyecenter 2. Camp Van Dyke (2024, 28”x28”, inkjet collage) on view at @silvereyecenter 3. It Just Kept Raining (2024, 28”x28”, inkjet collage) 4. Mama & them on Isle Royale (2024, 28”x28”, inkjet collage, acrylic ) 5. Just Before Dark no.1 + no.2 (2024, 28”x20”)

ON VIEW ALL WEEKEND FRI & SAT 12 PM - 6 PM SUN 12 PM - 4 PM Curated by Douglas Jones, Water, at Norwest Gallery of Art brings together artists working across print, sound, and digital media to explore the vital role of water in art making and in life itself. _____________________ Featured Artwork: Ian Solomon Cowrie 43.170° N, 90.673° W Inkjet on Heavy Cotton Rag 20 X 30

Still coming down from such a beautiful opening weekend in Pittsburgh with @silvereyecenter . Honored to share space and give flowers & connect with such expansive artists challenging traditional photography @_yoshann @orrantia_juan_ @mcnairevans @_cmlorenz_ @burnstorm . There’s a couple pieces of new work in the show to be talked about later, but for now— gratitude!

“We have been a global center for centuries, and before that a critical space for indigenous cultures. All of this history begins with the ground that holds us. While visitors and residents alike often speak of an energy in Detroit that is both unmatched and unexplainable, they stop short of mentioning the massive salt deposits beneath the asphalt or the 43 trillion gallons of fresh water rushing past the city each year. Almost never is the contemporary story of Detroit presented as a story of land.” Loved the opportunity to get some words off as well as feature some work old + new in @boardmanreview ! “Detroit Green” introduces a request for a new, greener narrative of my beautifully Black Detroit. As the essay says: “Detroit isn’t just green, it’s Black”. We sit at the axis of climate resiliency & environmental injustice and at this intersection exists an opportunity for a reckoning of global proportions. We must take advantage 💚✌🏾

“Lagoon” (2025) three 4x4 steel + instant film grid points. Available now with @acreresidency hearth auction! These instant film photos were taken in 2023 wading in the Ox-Bow lagoon during my fellowship at @oxbowschoolofart , another irreplaceable Midwest outdoorsy arts space. Both times and spaces were monumental for my practice & living, felt right to have one support the other. 50% of proceeds go to @acreresidency , support Midwest art residencies— go bid! 🫶🏾