The gallery’s door catches the summer air, but inside the room feels entirely like the sea. For the past few weeks, visitors stepping into the David Klein Gallery have found themselves pulled into the “Atlantic crescent”, which stretches between Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela. This is the world of Ritual Migration, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Christian Curiel currently on view until July 18th. For visitors, Curiel’s canvases have offered a space for reflection to a community intimately familiar with the definitions of migration, family survival, and the long, psychological road toward finding home.
The exhibition represents a two-year studio journey for Curiel, who was born in Puerto Rico to Cuban parents and raised in Miami. His imagery draws directly on the historical memory of the Cuban raft migration of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a defining era of displacement that reshaped immigrant families across the Americas and continues to echo in contemporary global politics.
“The name of the exhibition comes from ideas of migration and thinking a lot about the current state of affairs in the world,” Curiel says in this David Klein Gallery artist video.
“The paintings in ritual migration deal with figures in a state of voyage or a state of landing in some cases or a state of adapting to a new environment.”
The paintings vary in scale, using an intense, luminous palette of oils, acrylics, and mixed media on panel. Rather than offering static historical illustrations, Curiel explores transitional, “in-between” states: the psychological tightrope walked between home and diaspora, childhood and adulthood, exile and belonging.
In his essay for the exhibition, curator Wayne Northcross notes that the waters in Ritual Migration reflect what scholar Jonathan Howard terms “the Deep“, a concept in which the sea is not just a poetic metaphor but an ongoing, lived condition that history refuses to wash away, collecting over generations.
For Curiel, who earned his Masters of Fine Arts from Yale University and now balances his studio practice with teaching roles, the physical act of painting mirrors the emotional weight of these crossings. Working primarily on raw linen, Curiel intentionally leaves portions of the fabric exposed. The natural, earthy color of the textile functions as an atmospheric mid-tone or skin tone, making his human figures look as though they are literally surfacing from within the material itself.
His experimentation with water and acrylics adds organic texture to the work. By pouring water onto wet acrylic layers laid flat on the studio floor, he creates barriers that prevent the paint from drying. When the water is eventually wiped away, it leaves behind erosion patterns and droplet marks that evoke the weathered reality of sea travel.
While Curiel currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut, where he also collaborates with the four-artist collective Fe Cu Op, his work speaks to a global experience of identity. His paintings have been showcased in prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the Bass Museum and Pérez Art Museum in Miami, and El Museo del Barrio in New York, earning recognition in major international collections.
Bringing Ritual Migration to Metro Detroit provides a point of intersection for a region with its own rich history of labor migration, underground railroads, and the lively immigrant neighborhoods of Southwest Detroit across town. Curiel’s exploration of what it takes to find a sense of belonging hits close to home. The exhibition blends elements of magical realism while capturing the universal struggle of coming of age in an unpredictable world.
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of its Ferndale space, David Klein Gallery is hosting a public, all-ages party on Saturday, July 11th, from 2:00 to 8:00 PM. Inspired by Christian Curiel’s cultural heritage, the day’s lineup features a Caribbean-style coffee pop-up by Cafécito678, along with rhythmic Cuban Rumba performances by Duane Wrenn and Steve Jarosz from 2:00 to 3:30 PM. The celebration runs from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, featuring live music from Puerto Rican singer-songwriter LULU and Detroit dream-pop duo Bluhm.
David Klein Gallery
678 Livernois St, Ferndale, MI 48220
Ritual Migration Exhibition is on display until July 18th
https://www.dkgallery.com/exhibitions/123-christian-curiel-ritual-migration/
