The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced the 2023–24 participants in its world-renowned Artist-in-Residence program.
Which has championed the work of generations of outstanding artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent. sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley have been chosen as the program’s newest cohort, joining a creative community that has grown over the past half-century to nearly 150 alumni, including some of the most celebrated artists working today. From October 2023 to September 2024, the artists in residence will receive institutional and material support, including studio space, ongoing interaction with Studio Museum curators, professional development guidance, and a culminating exhibition.
Studio Museum Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden said, “We are honored to welcome sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley to the Artist-in-Residence program, which has been vital to the Museum since its inception. Over the past five decades, the program has had a deep impact on emerging artists. As the Museum enters a period of dynamic growth, this residency continues to reflect the heart of our mission, which is to provide unwavering support to working artists and present their work to our global community.”
Assistant Curator Yelena Keller said, “One of the most exciting elements of this residency is how, each year, the artists of this program push the Museum’s mission forward in new and expansive ways. sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley’s dynamic practices bring forth intimate and radical propositions for engaging Black histories while creating work that centers deep listening, care, and intention.”
Additionally, the culminating exhibition of work by the 2022–23 Artists-in-Residence cohort—Jeffrey Meris, Devin N. Morris, and Charisse Pearlina Weston—will be presented this fall at MoMA PS1 as part of a multiyear partnership between the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1.
sonia louise davis (b.1988) is a visual artist, writer, and performer born and raised in New York City. Her work is deeply invested in improvisation as an embodied research practice. She is currently a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellow at the Queens Museum, where her first institutional solo show, to reverberate tenderly, will open in late fall 2023. Her most recent solo exhibition, resonant frequencies, blossoming tones, at Hesse Flatow, was listed as a “must see” by Artforum in September 2022. Her newest book, slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one), was published in May 2021 by Co—Conspirator Press, which operates out of the Feminist Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles. In December 2021 she was invited to curate a benefit exhibition to support the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, hosted by Greene Naftali and featuring 106 artists. sonia has presented her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art; ACRE; Sadie Halie Projects; Ortega y Gasset, and Artists Space, among other venues. Residencies and fellowships include the Laundromat Project’s Create Change Fellowship; Civitella Ranieri; New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at the International Studio & Curatorial Program; Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program; Studio Immersion Project Fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop; Right Now Artist Publication Grant from Women’s Studio Workshop; and Stoneleaf Retreat. She is an honors graduate of Wesleyan University (BA, African American Studies) and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. sonia lives and works in Harlem.
Malcolm Peacock (b.1994) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the emotional and psychic spaces of his Black subjects. Peacock is particularly interested in art as a site to make and explore different forms of intimacy. He has participated in residencies at the University of Pennsylvania; St. Roch Community Church; the Joan Mitchell Center; Denniston Hill; and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Peacock has exhibited at Artists Space, New York; Terrault Gallery, Baltimore; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University; the Prospect Triennial, New Orleans; and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Peacock is the recipient of the 58th Carnegie International Fine Prize. He earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016 and an MFA from the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University in 2019.
Zoë Pulley (b.1993) is a designer and maker who utilizes stuff to surface the seemingly ordinary stories of Black folks through mixed media, typography, and audio. She defines “stuff” as artifacts both physical and nonphysical that may be relegated as unimportant to some—as merely, stuff. Most recently, Pulley has shown work in a group exhibition, Dress Code, at the Newport Art Museum, and a performance at RISD Museum. Her practice includes ongoing collaborations such as a wearable line inspired by her grandmother called GRAN SANS and a collectively authored publication titled Black Joy Archive. In 2021 she designed a zine for Combahee’s Radical Call: Black Feminisms (re)Awaken Boston at the Boston Center for the Arts. Her work is held in the collections of the Valentine Museum, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and Printed Matter. Pulley is an inaugural recipient of the Rhode Island School of Design Society of Presidential Fellowship and was awarded the Graduate Graphic Designer to Watch by GDUSA in 2023. She earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 and an MFA in graphic design from Rhode Island School of Design in 2023.
Artist-in-Residence Program
The Studio Museum’s foundational Artist-in-Residence program gives emerging artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent an unparalleled opportunity to develop their practice in an eleven-month residency and offers audiences the chance to view this work in an annual culminating exhibition. Alumni of the program, who now number nearly 150, include some of today’s most significant and innovative artists, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jordan Casteel, Lauren Halsey, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Titus Kaphar, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.
The Artist-in-Residence program is funded by the Glenstone Foundation. Additional support for the Artist-in Residence program provided by The American Express Kenneth and Kathryn Chenault Sponsorship Fund; National Endowment for the Arts; Joy of Giving Something; Robert Lehman Foundation; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Anonymous; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; and by endowments established by the Andrea Frank Foundation; the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Trust; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional funding is generously provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.
The Studio Museum in Harlem
Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, community activists, and philanthropists, the Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent. The Studio Museum is now constructing a new home at its longtime location on Manhattan’s West 125th Street. The building—the first created expressly for the institution’s program—will enable the Studio Museum to better serve a growing and diverse audience, provide additional educational opportunities for people of all ages, expand its program of world-renowned exhibitions, effectively display its singular collection, and strengthen its trailblazing Artist-in-Residence program.
While closed for construction, the Studio Museum’s groundbreaking exhibitions, thought-provoking conversations, and engaging art-making workshops continue at a variety of partner and satellite locations in Harlem and beyond. For more information, visit studiomuseum.org.
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Photo credit: 1) sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley. 2) sonia louise davis, emergence: wellspring, 2023. 3) Malcolm Peacock, We served… and they felt tiny bursts along the horizon, 2021. 4) Zoë Pulley, dear[ ] (video still), 2023.
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