On Wednesday, May 21 2025 at 11 am, Detroit-based artist and lecturer at the College for Creative Studies, Halima Afi Cassells will give a lecture at the Department for Textile Design (Faculty of technical engineering University of Bihać), entitled Art in Community. Guided by the questions what are the functions of art in community? and how do we each re-imagine and co-create a world beyond what is presented?, Cassells explores relationship-building, and the notions of freedom/work, and value/disposability, in a participatory context. Through projects like The Free Market of Detroit, The Traveling Indigo Vat, and Tables & Thrones series, Cassells established decades-long engagements with people, process, and circles of learning- which foster deepening understanding. She considers her life as an art project. Not exclusively as a performance, but more like a continual conversation and experiment in joy against all odds.

Halima Afi Cassells (b. 1981) is an award-winning interdisciplinary community-engaged artist/gardener/mom, currently lecturing at the College for Creative Studies in her hometown of Detroit. After a decade of creating murals, she credits gardening and bartering as inspiring her move away from painting into a practice using materials and processes that foster thriving of (human and non-human) communities. In addition to Detroit, her work has been featured in New York, Oakland CA, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oaxaca, Bogota, and Harare. Community is the heart of her work.