Images by Paul Taylor Films
APEX
Installation & Fashion Show
The Love Building
APEX is an art installation focused on Taylor Child’s family bar the APEX and the culture of the nightlife in Detroit during Paradise Valley in the 1940s.
Childs showcased fashion inspired by her connection with the bar through the lens of her grandmother's stories about Black land ownership. As Detroit’s population boomed, the North End saw an increasing percentage of Black residents from the South. Purchased after their migration from Georgia and renamed the APEX Bar/Lounge, the venue specialized in live blues bands and was a staple of a thriving music community on Oakland Avenue.
About Taylor Childs
Artist and Detroit native, Taylor Childs explores the representational visual vocabulary and themes of family, the after effects of the African Diaspora, Taylor translates this into a narrative where these themes are applied to explorations of fabric manipulation through textile tradition in order to create a dialogue representing African American life.
