PLAYGROUND DETROIT is pleased to announce the Emerging Artist Fellows selected for the 2025 Emerging Artists Fellowship. Selected artists will each receive a solo exhibition and $5,000 to develop their individual practices.
Fellows will create a new body of excellent artwork, gain industry experience, skills, knowledge, and mentorship, and participate in community programming. Artists were chosen based on their artistic excellence and dedication through an open call process and selected by a small professional arts jury.
The 2025 Emerging Artist Fellowship recognizes artists who are early in their careers with ambitious goals and who demonstrate artistic potential through creative risk-taking along with a clear vision of what they seek to produce and present. This year marks the fifth year of the program, launched in 2020. In total $70,000 has been granted directly to Detroit’s emerging artists.
MEET THE FELLOWS
Selected artists include Mobolaji Ayeni, Raymar, and Zahra Almajidi. The 2025 Emerging Artist Fellowship recognizes ambitious artists who are early in their careers and demonstrate artistic potential through creative risk-taking. The awardees represent a range of disciplines including photography, sculpture and painting, highlighting exhibitions from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists.
Mobolaji Ayeni
Mobolaji Ayeni (b. 1992) is a Nigerian-American visual artist, designer, and writer based in Detroit. His work explores memory, identity, and the strength of bonds between people. Drawing from family photos, human history and cultural objects, he creates visual narratives that reflect on intimate and collective experiences.
Raymar
Raymar is an artist, educator, and curator based in Detroit. A graduate of College for Creative Studies, Raymar uses photography, film, and music to explore fashion forward aesthetics and to embrace the topics of identity and individuality. The artist is highly influenced by music, which he uses to shape static and moving images alike as a soundtrack to elevate ideas and concepts.
Zahra Almajidi
Zahra Almajidi is a visual artist and metalsmith raised and based in Detroit, MI. Utilizing both traditional metal-smithing techniques and CAD/CAM processes, her work explores the ways in which objects and adornment allow displaced people to continue to uphold and practice their craft traditions while living in the diaspora.
Selection Process
The Committee reviewed an overwhelming response of over 200 artist submissions in order to select three awardees.
The 2025 Selection Committee includes Director, Paulina Petkoski and Gallery Manager, Liam Eagan, alongside Danya Ensing, Producer, Curator and Arts Organizer; Daniel Sharp, Cultural Strategist & Partnerships Manager; Diop Shumake, Technologist and Cultural Strategist; and Jessica Allie, Curator, Arts Facilitator & Founder of Shylo Arts.
This program is Powered by Gilbert Family Foundation.
About Gilbert Family Foundation
Gilbert Family Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation founded by Jennifer and Dan Gilbert to accelerate a cure for neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and build economic opportunity and equity in the city of Detroit. The Gilbert Family Foundation supports groundbreaking, cutting-edge research in hopes of eradicating NF1, a genetic disorder that causes tumors to grow on nerves anywhere in the body. Additionally, the Foundation supports the economic stability and mobility of residents in Detroit by investing in wealth-building opportunities and breaking down systemic barriers.
For more information on the Gilbert Family Foundation, please visit gilbertfamilyfoundation.org
About PLAYGROUND DETROIT
PLAYGROUND DETROIT is a contemporary art gallery and creative agency based in Detroit, MI established in 2012. As a social enterprise, the mission is to create opportunities for creative professionals, artists and residents to develop Detroit’s creative economy.
