DETROIT, MI.- Voyeur Ventureshas opened Divine Wisdom: Femme Alchemy Through Contemporary Art and Performance, a group exhibition and evening of performances highlighting the cultivation of feminine knowledge and power through the exploration of identity, meditation, sexuality, psychedelics, and art. The exhibition opened with a reception and performance on February 16.

Curated by Samara Furlong, Divine Wisdom brings together five artists to create a celebration of feminine strength and occult practices, and to explore an expansive conception of femme energy. Artworks on view include those by Shaina Kasztelan, Sara Nickleson, Olivia Guterson, Dawn Marie Smith, and Sedona Cohen. The works are accompanied by multiple activations from woman-led enterprises in the Detroit area, including tattoo models styled in Supernatural Lingerie, floral art by Four Leaf Clover Studios, aerial silks by Dari Blythe, a unique piano and vocal experience from Vanessa Cuccia, founder of Chakrubs, a DJ set by Petra Steele, Co-Founder of FemmeDom Detroit, and a Suzy Poling light installation. Drawing heavily from a roster of female artists working in Detroit, this exhibition serves to honor women claiming space for themselves and each other.

Meticulously organized by Furlong, each of the artists in this exhibition explores the role of woman as creator, with a unique capacity for sharing personal stories, exploring the mystical, and revealing feminine knowledge that hides in plain sight. Artworks include Shaina Kasztelan’s psychedelic dreamscapes, which initially appear colorful and sweet but contain darker undertones and provide commentary on consumerism; Sara Nickleson’s paintings, formed through a process of world building that is rooted in her studies of melancholia and consciousness, with care given to the fracturing of our natural environment; Olivia Guterson’s multidisciplinary work, which considers the idea of displacement and her complex Jewish-African identity, incorporating inspiration from her ancestors and significant objects such as her hairbrushes and afro picks; Dawn Marie Smith’s pieces, which she understands to be incantations, a means of communicating with the collective consciousness and exploring the experience of grief; And Sedona Cohen’s paintings, utilized as a meditation that channels subtle energies, and as the study of electricity, rebirth, healing, and spirituality mapped through dynamic symmetry.

“As curator, I explore how feminine power can be inculcated through art, meditation, sexuality, psychedelics, and other experiences,” said Samara Furlong, Founder of Voyeur Ventures. “These five artists channel energy and knowledge through their artistic processes into work that creates conversation and community. They are speaking to the collective consciousness and creating a space for growth and healing. Artmaking for these women is an alchemical process — a means for transforming the world around them and us.”

VOYEUR VENTURES

Founded by Samara Furlong, a seasoned expert with years of experience in museums, galleries, and foundations, Voyeur Ventures is a Detroit based art company dedicated to providing both new and experienced collectors with an inside view of the art world. Voyeur Ventures believes art is an enriching and transformative experience, and is passionate about helping collectors explore, acquire, and appreciate exceptional works of art. With a comprehensive range of services, they strive to create a seamless and fulfilling art journey for valued clients.

Samara Furlong is an independent curator and art experience facilitator. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York, and a BFA. She has worked at MOCAD, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Dia Art Foundation. Furlong recently founded Voyeur Ventures, and she serves on the Museum Committee of Cranbrook Art Museum.

SEDONA COHEN

Sedona Cohen is a Detroit born; Brooklyn based painter who recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. She creates spaces where self-sustaining ecosystems thrive. These are evolving

systems where energetic and visual information emanates from a mysterious divine source. The information is transformed and transmuted through processes that reflect her own personal alchemy. She has created her own set of symbols and forms which are constantly evolving at a pace similar to that of a flower blooming or a seed sprouting. She explores how a painting can be a parallel world, a meditation, a calculation, a living organism, a system of networks, storage for information, a tool for posing questions and seeking answers, and a time traveler.

OLIVIA GUTERSON

Olivia Guterson is a Detroit-based multidisciplinary artist and mother working primarily in painting and sculpture to explore personal and ancestral narratives with a curiosity around refusal, world building, liberation, and fugitivity. Currently pursuing her MFA in Painting at Cranbrook Academy of Art, she was a resident artist at McArthur Binion’s Modern Ancient Brown; an alum of Sibyls Shrine residency; a recipient of the Gilbert Fellowship and a founding member of ArtMamas Alliance. She was the featured visual artist for Governor Gretchen Whitmer's Juneteenth Proclamation in 2022. Her work has been shown at the Arab American National Museum, Louis Buhl Gallery, Prizm - Art Basel, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Jewish Artist Salon, Scarab Club, Janice Charach Gallery, Forum Gallery and more.

SHAINA KASZTELAN

Shaina Kasztelan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Detroit, Michigan. She was raised in a midwest suburb surrounded by rows of identical houses, half empty strip malls, and endless fast food franchises, all of which have influenced the materials and visual signifiers used in her work. Combining painting, sculpture, collage and installation, Kasztelan creates psychedelic dreamscapes of kitsch commodities that shuffle between curated control and disheveled mess. Through humorous juxtapositions, her work emphasizes the pleasure and disgust many of us feel simultaneously as a result of excessive consumption of manufactured goods and media. Kasztelan is currently an MFA candidate at Cranbrook Academy of Art. 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), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI), and 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.

SARA NICKLESON

Sara Nickleson is a painter and curator who lives in Detroit, Michigan and is getting her MA at Cranbrook Art Academy. In search of a departure from prevailing ideas around figuration, Nickleson imagines the body as impermanent, morphing and changing as a representation of complex human emotion and cognition. Rooted in her own longtime battle with depression—and significant reprieve through psychedelic therapy—the artist finds solace in world-building that draws from her studies in consciousness and melancholia, as well as theories around ‘deep adaptation’ in the face of climate crisis. Nickleson begins each painting by amassing a multitude of disparate elements to create her imagery through digital collage, a process she feels is representative of a human condition that is awkward, expansive, and fragmented.

DAWN MARIE SMITH

Dawn Marie Smith is a painter and tattoo artist born and raised in the Detroit area. Born to a blue-collar tradesman and Italian immigrant father, Dawn’s earliest memories include sleeping in the used tires of a body shop. “My father taught me how to use a brush,” she recalls. “I would watch him swish the enamel paint back and forth onto an old phone book, getting the paint just right to be applied to glass, while he practiced lettering.” That early influence would shape a lifelong art practice where she would pursue art in many forms. Smith received her BFA from CCS in 2011. Her skill for painting landed her a Lenawee County judicial portrait commission in 2015. Smith has won awards for her paintings and has been featured in several publications including a 2018 feature with Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. Her art is imaginative, stylized, and expressive. Her figurative paintings explore themes of magic and mystery through a study of femininity. Smith’s work often speaks to us about the ideal of feminine beauty with the undertone of a twisted psychology.