Micro / Macro

Welcome to Micro / Macro, the verbal description audio guide for Pass Carry Hold: Studio Museum’s Artists in Residence 2023–24.  

This exhibition features artwork by sonia louise davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley. Working across sound, textile, and installation, these artists explore modes of creation that engage the sensory system. This guide will focus on artworks that explore the impact of time on process, material, and scale. 

The exhibition is spread across three separate parallel galleries with each artist’s work occupying a single gallery. The galleries are located on the right hand side in the second floor hallway, beside the main stairwell. Each stop on the tour will include directional guidance to the artwork from each gallery’s doorway. This guide highlights one artwork by each artist. The first work is by sonia louise davis, it is a yarn-based tapestry. The second work is by Malcolm Peacock, it is a sculptural interpretation of a redwood tree. The third work is by Zoë Pulley, it is a large weaving with embroidered text. We encourage listeners to experience the artwork in the order and pace that feels most comfortable to them.  

Head 17 steps forward from the hallway entrance to the first work in this guide.

We are now in the doorway of a room with white and turquoise walls. As you enter, you will hear a layered instrumental composition seeping in from a small curtained gallery in the far left corner. On each wall and in the center of the gallery are artworks by sonia louise davis.

From the doorway, head diagonally 10 steps forward to experience the first stop in this guide. The title of the first work is emergence: utopias and visions. The artwork was created in 2024. The materials used are superbaby alpaca-merino blend, fine highland wool, recycled cotton, wool, acrylic, and polyester yarns. The work measures 47 ½ inches by 51 inches by 2 ½ inches.

The artwork hangs vertically and straight on a turquoise wall, and features colorful curvilinear forms that spill and merge into one another, creating a dynamic, multi-textural composition. Using an industrial tufting machine in lieu of a paintbrush, davis melds organic shapes, curves, dots, and lines into blossoming worlds. The piece is covered in a soft material like that of a carpet, so some shapes appear shaggy, while others seem flat. From the artwork’s corners, purple, green, black, and white shapes creep toward the center, their rounded and curved edges reminiscent of puddles after rain.

davis draws inspiration from her daily walks through St. Nicholas Park in Harlem, allowing the changing environment across seasons to shape these textile pieces. Some of these puddles are given a thin yellow-gold outline that follow their rippling edges, adding a sense of movement. Spread throughout the composition are rings and dots of varying sizes which overlap and intersect, resembling bacteria floating under a microscope, while thin lines of light purple twist and stretch across the surface.

davis refers to these works as "soft paintings".. These yarn-based tapestries of abstract forms reflect her interest in improvisation as embodied research and the history of Black feminist abstraction. Her intuitive, meditative process allows her hand to move freely, much like musical improvisation, resulting in tufted curls, dots, rings, and other shapes which appear to dance across the canvas. In these works, davis finds an expressive visual language liberated from the constraints of traditional art forms.

When you are ready to exit the gallery, turn right from the doorway and head 32 steps forward to visit the next artwork in this guide.

We are now in the doorway of a white room where a thin white curtain hangs parallel to the door. The curtain is reminiscent of an early morning fog coating the sky. In this gallery, an artwork by artist Malcolm Peacock sits on the gallery floor. Depending on when you entered the space, you might hear low, hushed voices, panting breaths, and a thumping beat. These voices and breaths belong to Peacock, his friends, and his family, as they audibly reflect on vulnerable moments and memories of those who have passed on. The audio work represents the relationship between Black convening and the natural world.

Head 10 steps forward from the doorway to experience the second stop in this guide. The title of the second work is Five of them were hers and she carved shelters with windows into the backs of their skulls. The artwork was created in 2024.

The materials used are foam, cement-mix overlay, wood, and synthetic hair. This work was created with assistance from Yacine Fall, Godfrey De Silva-Mlotshwa, and JaLeel Marques Porcha. The six-channel audio features September Eve Banks, Ainsey Brundage, Wesley Chavis, Taylor Janay Manigoult, and Maliyah Peacock. The work measures 96 inches by 72 inches by 96 inches.

The sculpture is at the back of the rectangular gallery. It is tall, wide, and sits vertically on the ground. It is cylindrical in shape, with room on all sides for the visitor to move around the artwork. The central work of Peacock’s exhibition is a sculptural interpretation of a redwood tree trunk with synthetic hair braids forming its bark. It is so realistic in size that it appears as if it was freshly cut and placed in the gallery. As you circle the piece, you will notice two white sheets of paper pinned to the sculpture with a silver, metal tack. The sheets have small printed text and a frayed edge, and are pulled directly from “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” by Frederick Douglass and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Alex Haley and Malcolm X. Just prior to the Pass Cary Hold exhibition opening night, Peacock pinned these pages to the work. These pages were the final touch, connecting two Black abolitionists across different periods of history.

The work is made with countless half-inch braids assembled from thin strands of synthetic hair, referencing the long tradition of hair braiding in Black communities. The braids are made of many variations of dark brown, dark orange, yellow, green, and white which are batched together to form sections of bark which emerge, spread, and twist to form the trunk, like roots growing from soil. At various ends of the braided bark, tufts of synthetic hair stick out from the sculpture. In many areas of the sculpture, the braids are arranged in a spiral pattern. The braids’ colors are blended into a gradient across the sculpture, and mimic the grooves and ridges of the redwood trees that inspired the sculpture.

Peacock learned to braid as a child from his mother, and through this work, he draws a connection between braiding as an act of care, protection, and bonding, and the resilience and interconnected support systems of Pacific Northwest forests, which Peacock would often visit during the summer.

Peacock is an artist and athlete whose art often utilizes and alternates common physical actions—talking, gazing, braiding, singing, running—to emphasize the states and feelings that accompany being present in proximity to others and one’s self, resulting in works that are at once ephemeral and durational.

When you are ready to exit the gallery, turn right from the doorway and head 7 steps forward to visit the next and last artwork in this guide.

We are now in the doorway of a white room with black and white checkered flooring. On each wall, artwork by artist Zoë Pulley is installed.

Depending on when you entered the space, you will hear projected voices which sound warm, honeyed, and confident. These voices belong to Pulley’s father, Brett Pulley; his older sister, Aunt Angela Hill; and their middle sister, Aunt Melanie Blagburn. They each recount childhood memories and recite poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks.

From the doorway, head 19 steps forward to experience the third and final stop in this guide. The title of this work is From D.C. to PG County in 1971. The artwork was created in 2024. The materials used are seat belt webbing, PVC piping, and thread. The work measures 96 inches by 96 inches.

The artwork is placed in the back of the room, hangs straight from the ceiling, and hovers just a few feet above the ground, appearing to levitate. Bright yellow pipes are connected at the edge of each corner to form a square. Within this square, thin strips of hot pink, orange, purple, and light pink fabric are stretched across the square, forming a loom. In this work, Zoë Pulley, a designer and mixed media maker, spotlights a moment in her ancestry: a pivotal move from Washington, DC to the suburbs of Prince George’s County Maryland in 1971 as part of the Great Migration. With a practice rooted in archiving familial histories, Pulley’s woven installation is informed by memories and dreams that are passed down through generations.

The strips are taut and pass over and under each other. The weaving pattern resembles an empty chess board awaiting its next players. Each strip is embroidered with words, symbols, and numbers in pink and purple colored thread. Pulley sews excerpts from Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “kitchenette building” with text from the 1968 Fair Housing Act, a legislation prohibiting housing discrimination with the goal of desegregating the United States. The font is traditional and varies in size, similar to a font that might be used in a business contract. Some embroidered phrases can be read clearly from left to right and some can be read in zig zag or crisscross patterns across the artwork. The work forms a tapestry which represents the myth of the American Dream paired with the negotiations of placehood and belonging that Black people engage in daily. It is through an insistence on remembering one's life and others' that Black people renegotiate how history is recorded or understood. Throughout the piece, the text begins, ends, and interrupts itself. Despite this, Pulley proposes that the common act of remembering is part of a necessary practice of care.