AGE: 30
BASED: New York
A hulking tree trunk will spend the winter in one of MoMA PS1’s galleries this year. Measuring eight feet tall and assembled out of foam, cement, wood, and over 3,000 braids of synthetic hair, the sculpted relic constitutes Malcolm Peacock’s latest exercise in endurance. Punctuated by a sonic tapestry of recordings that immerse visitors in moments of “Black convening,” the installation is not a static sanctuary, but a continually evolving act of presence.
When we met ahead of its unveiling this fall, Peacock was already calling Five of them were hers and she carved shelters with windows into the backs of their skulls a milestone piece. The Raleigh, North Carolina–born, Baltimore-raised artist began work on the installation last January, a few months into a Studio Museum in Harlem residency that the PS1 showing concludes, pulling from research on redwoods he’d initiated after two summers spent in the Pacific Northwest. It is the only artwork he will have made in 2024.
Peacock is well aware that most young artists would be warned against dedicating close to a year to a single piece. “Not when you’re 30,” he tells me with a laugh. But that one-track mindset has paid off thus far. “I have made six things in the last five or six years and they’ve all been the standout thing of every group exhibition that I’ve been in,” Peacock reasons. The Studio Museum residency is just the latest in a round of institutional attention—including the 58th Carnegie International Fine Prize and a duo show with fellow Young Artist Shala Miller at ArtistsSpace—that the interdisciplinary artist has garnered since earning his MFA at Rutgers University in 2019.
When asked where he thinks the next five years will take him, Peacock doesn’t blink an eye. “I just want to keep moving like this,” he says. “I would rather have a different career before I settle.” Refusing to settle, or to settle down—that daily dissent grounds Peacock’s practice. Whether he’s braiding, leading breathing exercises, or running while reciting an inner monologue, the artist is interested in making the experience of effort—and the (often invisible) barriers to accessing rest and recreation—manifest. What comes after? A long exhale.
