Peter Blum Gallery is pleased to present in relation to stillness, a group exhibition curated by Auttrianna Ward of new and recent works by Abigail Lucien, Manuel Mathieu, Malcolm Peacock, Tadáskía, and Sarah Zapata. There is an opening reception on February 5, 6 – 8pm at 176 Grand Street, New York with the exhibition on view through March 27, 2026.
The exhibition, in relation to stillness, is a presentation of works that do not ask us to define stillness, but to consider our relation to it. Here, stillness is felt in the labor of the work itself—through repetition, boundary, refusal, and intention. It is a way of working that resists immediacy without retreating from meaning. While the artists in this exhibition move across different materials and lineages, their practices share a commitment to duration, material patience, and time taken rather than time granted.
Across sculpture, textile, painting, and installation, the works center processes that unfold slowly and deliberately. The hand remains visible. Materials carry weight. Surfaces stay open, bearing the traces of making. These are practices attentive to ground, both literal and metaphorical, where meaning is built through endurance, commitment, and sustained presence. Stillness here is not the absence of movement, but the condition that allows movement to be intentional.
Abigail Lucien approaches time as a material in itself, using space, structure, and poetics to linger within questions of loss, belonging, and inheritance. Manuel Mathieu’s practice resists imposed framing, operating with autonomy and spiritual openness so that forms are allowed to emerge rather than being forced. Malcolm Peacock’s work embodies slowness through devotion to process and scale, allowing labor to remain legible rather than concealed. Tadáskía’s work reflects the freedom that stillness can afford—the choice to set boundaries, to shape one’s own pace, and to insist on alignment over demand. Sarah Zapata’s textiles draw on deep histories of making, engaging earth-based understandings of time, tradition, and continuity.
Stillness in this exhibition is neither aestheticized nor sentimental. It carries consequence. It asks for quiet where response is expected, and for commitment where speed is rewarded. The works do not seek resolution; they hold space instead, allowing meaning to surface gradually and without urgency. This exhibition has been shaped through relationships and extended conversations after coming to know these artists over time—some over many years, others more recently. The decision to work together emerged from a shared rhythm, and like its own coming together, this exhibition takes its time and asks the same of us.
Abigail Lucien (b.1992, from Cap-Haïtien, Haiti; lives and works in Queens, NY) is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist. Working across sculpture, literature, and time-based media, their practice addresses themes of (be)longing, futurity, myth, and place by considering our relationship to inherited colonial structures and systems of belief/care. Implicating our relationship to material and place through an architectural vernacular, Lucien uses formal poetics to ponder concepts such as loss, love, and grief as fluid processions rather than states to reach or become. Exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), MoMA PS1 (Queens, NY), SculptureCenter (Queens, NY), and Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD). Lucien is Assistant Professor and Area Head of Sculpture at Hunter College, New York, NY.
Manuel Mathieu (b. 1986, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; lives and works in Montreal, QC) is a Haitian multi-disciplinary artist. Working across painting, ceramics, olfaction, and installation, his practice investigates themes of historical violence, erasure, and spiritual legacy by considering cultural approaches to physicality and nature. Drawing from his upbringing in Haiti and later emigration to Montreal, Mathieu utilizes a distinctive abstract visual language to create phenomenological encounters that find meaning through a spiritual or asemic mode of apparition. By allowing amorphous forms to vacillate and dissolve, his work explores the tension between inherited tradition and boundless, traversable landscapes of desire. Mathieu has held solo exhibitions at MoCA North Miami (Miami, FL), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, QC), Longlati Foundation (Shanghai, China), De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill-on-Sea, U.K.), and The Power Plant (Toronto, ON).
Malcolm Peacock (b. 1994, Raleigh, NC; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an American multidisciplinary artist. Working across performance, sculpture, and time-based media, his practice explores the emotional and psychic spaces of Black subjects by considering the intricacies of intimacy and communal presence. Utilizing a methodology of "slow choreo," Peacock proposes a synchronized deceleration of mind and body to decouple the value of life from labor productivity while heightening sensory engagement with one's surroundings. By prioritizing the "untouchable" yet deeply felt remnants of human connection, his work fosters the development of the self in relation to others within both natural and built environments. Exhibitions include Whitney Biennial 2026 (New York, NY), MoMA PS1 (Queens, NY), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD) and Artists Space (New York, NY).
Tadáskía (b. 1993, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; lives and works in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist. Working across drawing, writing, painting, sculpture, and "apparitions," her practice explores themes of transformation, freedom and cosmologies. Utilizing a kaleidoscopic palette and organic materials such as taboa (reed), bamboo, charcoal, and fruits, Tadáskía creates mystical landscapes and imaginative environments that foreground the experiences of the Black diaspora. Her work often employs a fluid, improvisational mark-making process to navigate between familiarity and foreignness, proposing the passage of time as a central protagonist. Solo exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf, Germany), and Musée d'Art Contemporain de la Haute-Vienne (Rochechouart, France). She was a featured artist in the Bienal de São Paulo 2023, the recipient of the 2025 K21 Global Art Award, and named on the 2025 TIME100 Next list.
Sarah Zapata (b. 1988, Corpus Christi, TX; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is a Peruvian-American multidisciplinary artist. Working across handweaving, latch-hooking, and sewing, her practice employs labor-intensive textile processes to explore the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and pre-colonial histories. Utilizing an "architectural vernacular" that transforms soft materials into loud, immersive landscapes, Zapata investigates systems of power, control, and cultural relativism. By integrating traditional Peruvian weaving sensibilities with modern American carpet-making, her work functions as a site of resistance and a celebration of the "in-between," proposing a queer futurity that bridges ancient civilizations with contemporary experience. Exhibitions include Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, AZ), Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), and Barbican Centre (London, UK).
Auttrianna Ward is an independent curator, film artist, publisher, and cultural producer, and the founder of Auttrianna Projects. She has spent the last fifteen years working between New York, Baltimore, London, Brazil, and Los Angeles. Her practice uses curatorial, publishing, and film-based methodologies to decenter dominant American narratives and foreground the work of Black, Asian, and Indigenous artists globally, with particular attention to the legacies of colonial violence and the possibilities of collective memory. Ward’s writing has been featured by the Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum Magazine, Saint Heron, Elephant Magazine, and Elle Canada, and her work has been covered by Frieze, Artnet, Vogue México, Rolling Stone Africa, Forbes, Cultured, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She holds an MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in History from Manhattanville College.
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