House of Tarot
560 Custer St.
Detroit
Through Nov. 1
Detroit really is a playground for artists. House of Tarot returned this week for its third iteration, bringing an artist-driven immersive tarot card experience in an abandoned building, this time in a former warehouse near the city’s New Center neighborhood.
The current installation — which continues to grow after its first two locations at the former Herman Keifer hospital and the Boyer Campbell Building in Detroit — features representations of 37 of the 78 cards in the tarot deck, created by 40 artists. Each artist started with a tarot reading and was given free rein to design an exhibit based on their (perhaps divinely selected?) card.
The result is an eerie-not-scary maze of creativity, with installations that encourage personal reflection on topics ranging from ambition to grief to self-doubt, starting with visitors being assigned their own cards through a randomized projection selection.
While it’s fun to rush to see the exhibit of your own assigned card — I “drew” the Two of Wands — I felt more of a connection to some of the others I experienced.
One of my favorites was Samantha Salzinger’s interpretation of The Seven of Pentacles, a relatively simple installation about taking satisfaction in your current place in life, instead of constantly moving the goalposts in search of more. When I walked into the tiny, wedged exhibit and saw a fur-trimmed TV screen playing videos of brightly colored melting ice cream, I raised an eyebrow. But when they delivered the accompanying makeshift magazine “Probably” — with charming articles on patience and optimism — I began to understand we were in a waiting room, an acknowledgment that it’s OK to enjoy the ride as we strive for our personal ambitions. The space was whimsical, happy and calming, and I found myself just hanging out and chatting with my friends for quite a while.
Another one that touched me was Julianna Sanroman’s interpretation of The Ten of Swords, about coping with grief without losing yourself to it. Her exhibit featured a mosaic of brightly colored rice arranged in a pattern on the floor, almost like a rectangular carpet. Branches of rice then spread away from the center leading to three makeshift graves — a display of how grief may always be connected to us, but it doesn’t need to take over from our own life essence.
Some exhibits are interactive and playful. Simon Alexander-Adams’s installation on The Three of Wands features a ground projection that expands into various patterns as you walk on specific shapes. ACE’s version of The Hierophant uses colorful overhead lights to make for some interesting patterns and images when you step behind the screen.
The Three of Wands by Simon Alexander-Adams.
Perhaps the most fun and thought-provoking experience of the night wasn’t one of the official exhibits at all — it was artist Adam Borut’s tarot-themed Connect 4 game located near the entrance. The workmanship of the wooden, handmade structure alone was beautiful, with thin wooden tarot cards serving as the traditional chips.
But this version comes with a divine twist. To start, players think of a personal issue they’d like guidance on, just as you would for a traditional tarot reading. To play, each player stands on either side of the board with their own set of wooden cards and blindly inserts them with the front facing away (meaning I could see the face of my opponent’s cards but not my own). When someone makes a connect four, both parties get their past, present, and future readings based on the winning set. The winner reads cards one through three, while the loser reads cards two through four, in order of play.
I’m quite good at Connect 4, and my friend and I had a fairly lengthy game. Interestingly, my focus on blocking her row prevented me from making my own winning move, and she ended up winning anyway (I’m sure there’s a divine metaphor there). I had asked the universe whether the career choices I was making were going to pay off. My losing past, present, and future cards were The Chariot, The Empress, and The Wheel, which I interpreted from the book as hustle, abundance, and surprise, “a universal check on our attempts at control.” Not sure I love that last part.
While perhaps not expressly a Halloween event, the mysticism of the spooky season makes House of Tarot an exciting, unique way to celebrate the holiday, especially if you’ve grown tired of the traditional haunted houses and costume parties.
I’ve never had an inkling of a sixth sense or divine intervention, but I can’t help but wonder what my reading would have been if I’d actually won that Connect 4 game, as God, apparently, had not intended. Perhaps I’ll go back and try again.
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