Remembering Yellow
ACKEEM SALMON
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 23rd | 6 - 9 PM
Remembering Yellow explores Ackeem’s journey from Jamaica to Detroit, where memory and identity meet in layered, intimate ways. Through a series of self-portraits—both direct and symbolic—the work examines belonging, softness, and the quiet defiance of authenticity in a world that often demands conformity.
The series draws on the color, rhythm, and spirit of Junkanoo, an Afro-Caribbean tradition with roots in the 17th century. Born during the era of slavery, Junkanoo was celebrated during the three days of rest enslaved Africans were granted at Christmas—a fleeting yet radical space for music, masquerade, and satire that subverted colonial authority. In Remembering Yellow, this legacy becomes both celebration and critique, a visual language for challenging power while affirming selfhood.
Remembering Yellow
The title also reflects a personal and political tension. As a child, Ackeem was often corrected to call the “yellow” of the Jamaican flag “gold,” in keeping with its official symbolism of wealth and sunshine. Here, he reclaims “yellow” as a marker of his lived reality under the sun—one that resists romanticized national narratives shaped by colonial legacy, and instead honors the true, often unspoken experiences of those native to the land.
Rooted in Afro-Caribbean heritage and shaped by an immigrant journey across Jamaica, Paris, and Detroit, these images speak to the fluidity of identity within the African Diaspora. In a time of migration, cultural reckoning, and shifting notions of freedom, Remembering Yellow stands as both a personal archive and a collective mirror—an invitation to see difference not as division, but as a source of resilience and beauty.
ACKEEM SALMON
Ackeem Salmon is originally from Kingston, Jamaica, and now resides in Detroit, MI. He is an interdisciplinary visual artist and performer working across photography, painting, drawing, and installation. He earned his BFA in Photography and Fine Art with honors from the College for Creative Studies with additional studies at the Paris College of Art.
Alongside his visual practice, Ackeem is a harpist who integrates performance, music composition, and critical theory writing—exploring the ephemerality of theatre and performance alongside the permanence of art and design.
Often autobiographical and rooted in postcolonial theory, his work examines individuality, social progress, and the ways cultural history shapes contemporary identities. Through his art, he seeks to connect these identities through shared humanity and empathy.
Internationally recognized, his exhibitions include Galerie Joseph in Paris, France; Val de Vie Estate in Cape Town, South Africa; Sotheby’s Auction House in New York; and other prominent galleries and venues.
Ackeem is a 2023 Gilda awardee in Interdisciplinary Work from the Kresge Foundation, a 2024 Ashley Longshore Excellence in the Arts recipient from the National YoungArts Foundation, a 2025–2026 artist-in-residence with AIRE (Artists in Residence in the Everglades), and will be a featured speaker and performer at the 2025 Polymath Festival in London on September 25, hosted at SOAS University of London in partnership with the DaVinci Network. He is also the founder and executive director of Mirrored Glass, an interdisciplinary arts nonprofit and co-creation platform that supports emerging and midcareer artists through exhibitions, residencies, and collaborative projects—creating tangible and alternative pathways for creative economic mobility.