New Gantt exhibit in Charlotte spotlights homeownership and the Black community
Flames rise from the bottom corner of an official document, as the charred page begins to curl. Three people, each with a few fingers pinching opposite corners, wait for the fire to turn the paper to ash.
The painting, “Mortgage Burning” by Detroit artist Mario Moore, is one of 14 works in the latest exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture, “In Pursuit of Home.”
The exhibition brings into light the racial disparities of pursuing homeownership in America. It’s curated by Dexter Wimberly, a Japan-based curator who has followed Moore’s work since the two met in 2011 at Yale University.
“I’m thinking about what it means to be in pursuit of a home,” Moore said. “But beyond just the idea of a box, or a place to call home or live in, it’s more about looking for home in a general term, looking for a place of safety, a place to feel freedom, a place where you have community — a city, a town, a country, state or state of mind.”
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Experiencing the homebuying process
The idea for the exhibition came about three years ago, when Moore, a Detroit native, began considering buying a house with his wife.
“I was realizing the prices of things. I was realizing a lot of things that many Americans, and especially millennials and Gen Zers, are dealing with economically. There’s an economic weight on us,” he said. “The idea of buying a house seems insane now with the prices of everything, and it’s difficult for a lot of Americans.”
In addition to facing economic realities, a deep curiosity about the homebuying process and its history gripped Moore.
“I was wondering why certain bills look the way they did, why my appraisals differed so much,” he said. At one point, he was turned down for a renovation loan because of a low appraisal in one of Detroit’s historic districts.
“It made me really consider all that happened before I got there,” he said. “What have other Black people, generations of Black people, faced when it comes to buying property all across America?”
A long, complicated history of homeownership
White Americans have a 71.1% homeownership rate, compared to a 47% rate for people of color, according to data compiled by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
The largest disparity is with Black Americans. At 41.7%, Black households have the lowest homeownership rate nationally, 30 percentage points lower than white households.
The reasons for the disparities are complex.
A national history of redlining, segregation and discrimination play a large part, as do lower median household incomes among Black families and higher loan denial rates.
“Generations of Black wealth was taken from Black communities through essentially predatory tax purchases and certain promises that have been given to the Black community since the end of slavery,” he said. “The idea of 40 acres and a mule — and we’re still searching for the white house with the picket fence.”
‘In Pursuit of Home’ at the Gantt Center
“In Pursuit of Home” addresses some of these topics in paintings, graphite drawings and sculpture.
The oldest piece in the show dates to 2017, while Moore created the majority of works in 2024 and 2025, after he purchased his own home.
A few paintings, including one titled “Commodities,” take a historical turn and focus on the Colonial period in Michigan, specifically the fur trade during Detroit’s founding. “I look at how Black people were a part of this, even though it’s not recognized in that early history,” he said.
“What did it look like, for enslaved people to be planted in this frontier space?”
The exhibition then moves to works that center on the physical home and experiences in it.
In “The Arrival,” for example, the artist depicts himself standing in the doorway to his personal residence, holding a letter in his hand.
“Whether you rent or own a home, you’ve been handed something that you do not appreciate, that you are not excited to open,” Moore said. “I have a certain look on my face. But it’s also that you’re an adult now, and it’s your responsibility.”
Finding hope in a mortgage burning
Moore’s work can be found in a number of museum collections across the country, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Studio Museum in Harlem, the traveling Smithsonian Sites Exhibition “Men of Change” and Princeton University Art Museum, in addition to the Gantt Center.
Though Moore’s new Gantt exhibition tackles weighty subjects, there’s also a thread of hope throughout the show.
“All of the works have elements of hope, like Black people existing in spaces that you wouldn’t usually see us in visually, and that’s incredibly important for me,” Moore said. “But one of the paintings that I really find aspirational is the mortgage burning.
“Black churches did mortgage burnings. A lot of churches actually did mortgage burnings. But I think about how now, it seems like a mythology. It seems like a level of mysticism and an impossibility,” he said. “But the idea of it is still beautiful: to pay off your mortgage and own that home.
“Seeing that in the past means that it’s something that can happen again.”
Want to go?
“In Pursuit of Home” is on view through April 26 at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, 551 S. Tryon St., Charlotte.
On Feb. 17 at 7 p.m., the Gantt is hosting an artist’s talk with Moore on its YouTube page as part of its monthly “Open Air” series. You can register here.
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