Tiff Massey

Tiff Massey is an internationally recognized artist whose work spans immersive installations, public art, wearable sculpture, and performance. Rooted in her experiences living and working in Detroit, Massey’s practice explores the relationship between the body, adornment, and the built environment through Black cultural expression and community-centered engagement.

Trained as a metalsmith and jeweler, Massey merges traditional metalsmithing with large-scale sculpture, textiles, sound, and spatial design, creating works that operate across object, body, and architectural scale. Drawing on 1980s hip-hop culture and the visual language of adornment within the African diaspora, her work examines contemporary questions of race, class, identity, and popular culture.

Massey was the first Black woman to earn an MFA in metalsmithing from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. In May 2024, Massey became the youngest artist to present a solo exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts; her exhibition, 7 Mile + Livernois, recorded the highest attendance in the museum’s history. Her honors include a 2021 United States Artist Fellowship, the 2019 Art Jewelry Forum Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant, two Knight Arts Challenge awards from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellowship.