‘Pass Carry Hold’ features new work by sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley
LEFT TO RIGHT: Artists in residence Malcolm Peacock, Zoë Pulley, and sonia louise davis. Photo: Courtney Sofiah Yates
The Studio Museum in Harlem will present ‘Pass Carry Hold: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2023–24’, the latest edition of its annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition, from September 26, 2024, through February 10, 2025, at MoMA PS1. Featuring new work by artists sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley, the 2023–24 cohort of the Studio Museum’s foundational residency program, this exhibition is the sixth presentation as part of a multiyear collaboration between the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1.
Exploring cycles of transition and transfer, the artists in ‘Pass Carry Hold’ reference how ancestral and intuitive knowledge are activated through that which is passed on, carried forward, and held onto. With practices spanning sound, textile, and installation, davis, Peacock, and Pulley engage sensorial modes of making. Here, materials serve as both symbol and method. Family photographs, hand-braided hair, and soundscapes call attention to daily practices of caring for others through record-keeping and storytelling traditions. As much about process as finished objects, the works on view reveal the traces of their becoming. Through methods of sewing, embroidery, braiding, and tufting, the artists query how forms of quotidian labor, which often function to fulfil basic needs, can also serve as acts of care and creative expression. In ‘Pass Carry Hold’, these artists pose that time itself is a material; its mark on the work, however undefined, is an invitation to slow down, bear witness, and stay a while.
Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “It has been a joy to witness this year’s artists in residence, sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley, as they have evolved their practices over the past year. Each artwork in ‘Pass Carry Hold’ serves as a testament to the profound ways Black material culture informs and preserves a collective memory. My deep appreciation goes to MoMA PS1, our institutional partner over the last few years, whose continued collaboration makes this exhibition possible.”
Committed to radical softness, sonia louise davis uses visual art, writing, and musical performance to channel wonder, experimentation, and play. With a background in jazz performance, davis employs improvisational approaches in her use of vibrant colours, organic gestures, and musical interventions, all of which participate in a longstanding tradition of Black feminist abstraction. At MoMA PS1, davis presents an immersive audio work, wall painting, and five textile-based works that she terms “soft paintings,” in which tufted curls, dots, rings, and other shapes emerge from and dance across the canvases. Exhibiting her textiles on free-standing supports, davis crafts pathways through the gallery that weave audiences in and out of abstract colour- and soundscapes.
Malcolm Peacock works across performance, audio, and sculpture to explore Black subjectivity and the spatial politics that govern Black mobility within natural and built environments. Peacock’s practice is largely informed by his longstanding commitment to running, an activity that carries a complex history as it relates to Black people. Reflecting on the physical and psychological experience of long-distance running and sacred connections to nature, the artist will exhibit a sculpture-and-audio work in the form of a redwood tree trunk covered in thousands of handmade synthetic hair braids. Intimate and expansive, Peacock’s installation meditates on how access to nature remains racialised, the corporeal endurance that braiding and running demand, and the contemplation of time amid loss and healing.
Zoë Pulley looks to “stuff” as a holder of individual and collective Black memory. Through a design-based practice, Pulley excavates meaning from the seemingly mundane to reveal hidden histories. For this installation, the artist and maker offers an intimate portrait of her family, incorporating sculpture, audio, repeating patterns, and found objects that together form a familiar kitchen space. In looking at this space as a site where thoughts and dreams are spoken aloud or kept quiet, Pulley revisits familial histories and tends to the memories embedded in personal objects, revealing stories that might not be readily seen.
To celebrate the opening of ‘Pass Carry Hold’, a roundtable discussion with the artists in residence – sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley – will be held at MoMA PS1 on October 19, 2024. In a conversation moderated by Yelena Keller, Assistant Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem, the artists will discuss work created over the course of the residency program. This program is free and open to the public as part of MoMA PS1’s Open House.
‘Pass Carry Hold: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2023–24’ is organised by Yelena Keller, Assistant Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem; and Jody Graf, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1; with Adria Gunter, Curatorial Assistant, Studio Museum in Harlem. As the Studio Museum prepares to open its new building, it is actively reshaping the timeline for the next cohort of the Artist-in-Residence program. The exhibition will be on view from the 26th of September, 2024, until the 10th of February, 2025. For more information, please visit the Studio Museum in Harlem.
