Juror Statement:
The Ghosts That Linger is an exhibition that explores how objects and places become repositories of memory and meaning. The works on view highlight the emotional weight we attach to things kept, discarded, or found again, as well as places we move through, revisit, or leave behind. By working with re-purposed materials or referencing familiar environments and personal histories, the artists reflect on the ways nostalgia, sentimentality, and memory shape our sense of identity.
Objects and places hold a peculiar kind of power. A chipped mug or a quiet stretch of road can become charged with associations far beyond their material reality. These things awaken memories and daydreams that arrive like fragments of a dream, stirring emotions of comfort, sorrow, and bittersweetness. The works on view invite us to consider how we map our lives through the things and places that endure in our imagination. They ask us to recognize the subtle, sometimes haunting presence of the past in the material world that surrounds us in the present. In giving form to these lingering ghosts, the artists reveal that the experiences we can never fully relive are never entirely gone.
Shaina Kasztelan Bio:
Shaina Kasztelan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Detroit, Michigan. She was raised in a midwest suburb surrounded by rows of identical houses, ever-changing strip malls, and endless fast-food franchises, all of which have influenced the materials and formal signifiers used in her work. Operating between painting, sculpture, collage, and installation, Kasztelan creates psychedelic dreamscapes using kitsch commodities that shuffle between curated control and chaotic mess. Through humorous juxtapositions, her work criticizes the pleasure and disgust many of us feel simultaneously due to the excessive consumption of manufactured goods and media prevalent under late capitalism.
Kasztelan received a BFA from the College for Creative Studies in 2012 and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2024. In addition to her formal education, the artist has worked as a muralist, built theater sets, worked as a prop maker, and spent years building floats for America’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Her work has been exhibited in many places including The Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI), the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI), and the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities (Ann Arbor, MI). Notable murals include those painted for the NXNE Music Festival (Toronto, ON), Facultad de Artes y Diseño UNAM (Mexico City, MX), and as an assistant for the Glass City River Wall (Toledo, OH) which is currently the largest mural in the United States
"The Ghosts that Linger" runs through November 8, 2025. Click on the images to view the artist statement and more information about the artwork.
