Rebeca Maxon Sáenz
Retrofit
Style & Memory in Southwest Detroit
A project of The Southwest Detroiter Community Archives
Retrofit uplifts stories of Detroiters’ formative years—centering Southwest Detroit while connecting neighborhoods across the city through storytelling rooted in fashion, culture, and everyday documentation. From yearbooks and uniforms to MySpace and Facebook galleries, the project traces memory across analog and digital eras.
Through Shoeboxing sessions, community Memory Keepers will share artifacts and stories. Each participant is photographed holding their memories, making visible the role of community stewardship.
This installation welcomes storytellers from across Detroit, recognizing that culture and experience are shaped by context, time, and place, offering both shared ground and meaningful difference across neighborhoods. While Retrofit is rooted in Southwest Detroit, it welcomes stories from across the city, acknowledging that Detroit’s cultural life moves through conversation, influence, and exchange among neighborhoods.
As these stories are placed in constellation, they reveal how pieces of everyday life have often been carried and kept by accidental archivists. The fragments form a living community archive. Retrofit is a chapter of The Southwest Detroiter Community Archives, using the Shoeboxing methodology to keep memory in community hands.
About The Storyteller
Rebeca Maxon Sáenz
Rebeca is a three-time University of Michigan graduate, a visual storyteller, and a current Doctoral Candidate at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Rebeca is a Xicana Southwest Detroit-raised interdisciplinary scholar and artist who is passionate about using visual, documentary, and multimodal mediums to uplift community stories.
Collaborator: The Southwest Detroiter Community Archives
The Southwest Detroiter is a multi-media community storytelling initiative thru Inside Southwest Detroit dedicated to youth, community, culture, and place, and developing emerging storytellers, lens-based artists, and creatives.
The Southwest Detroiter Archives is a community archive of photos, film, stories, and memorabilia from current and former residents of Southwest Detroit.
Archive projects are a critical local wisdom and a participatory community practice. They guide our journey of piecing together stories starting with shoeboxes of lived experiences from under own own beds. Everyone is an archivist, an important community resource activated only by connecting our stories.
Stories are collected in person, sorting through pics and pieces of Southwest Detroit together in community. This approach creates a live, documented storytelling time with visuals, oral histories, and shared space—and guarantees that precious memories and memorabilia never leave the hands of the archivist.