Scales and fur and flower petals, gossamer wings and morning dewdrops. Working on paper, whose raw, frayed edges belie the force of the composition within them, Derriann Pharr draws out the shape of a woman, long and animalesque, in “Squinching my eyes shut and wishing real hard (Honey’s Dream)” (2026).
In “Bring My Bones Home!” (2026), a bulbous female figure coils around a tiny creature in a gesture of tender but watchful protection. Spiky sculptural elements protrude above her, guardingly.
Derriann Pharr, “Bring My Bones Home!” (2026)
Pharr’s works are part of A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026, an exhibition of the institution’s inaugural resident cohort. They converse with Simonette Quamina’s indigo-hued dreamscapes and Taylor Simmons’s intimate oil tableaux, all filling a spacious fourth-floor gallery in the Studio Museum’s new 82,000-square-foot building in Harlem, with evident curatorial care to avoid crowding, to let each practice breathe.
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