In Solo Show, we ask Black artists to curate a list of three treasured works that they’ve encountered or made, and to reflect on how their practice connects to a broader art lineage.
The artist and poet Precious Okoyomon has created a forest in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 in Queens. Opening tomorrow and set to stay up for two years, the installation includes more than 60 trees and 1,500 perennials and annuals, many of which were selected and cultivated by Okoyomon in collaboration with the Rhode Island specialty nursery Issima. Nestled within the flora is a 25-foot-long steel-and-concrete sculpture of a teddy bear, a symbol that’s appeared in many of the Brooklyn-based artist’s multimedia installations, including those at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria in 2025 and at the Venice Biennale in 2022. “I’m thinking through what New York City’s climate will look like in 10 years,” they say of the forest, the first of a new series of courtyard commissions at PS1. As rising global temperatures change the way we live and, indeed, which ecosystems can survive, Okoyomon believes, “gardening is actually a practice of future making and world building.” Here, they speak more about the installation, and about two artworks by others that have influenced their own practice.
The work that first inspired them
Adrian Piper’s “The Humming Room” (2012)
It’s a very simple and playful work: You’re asked to hum for a security guard [to be let into an empty room]. I saw it at Piper’s retrospective in New York [at the Museum of Modern Art]. I remember the guard was smiling a bit, and that the slow, subtle release of humming did something for me. For a long time, my mom worked as a death doula for a hospice. I was raised to see art as a practice of care and witnessing — and witnessing is so much a part of this piece. Art can be the space you make and allowing people to come into spaces that they don’t expect. With all of my gardens and living works, [I consider]: How can I bring this person in?
A work they return to again and again
Pierre Huyghe’s “A Journey That Wasn’t. Double Negative” (2005)
I love the amount of freedom and joy in Pierre Huyghe’s practice. In 2005, Huyghe and his friends and collaborators traveled to the Antarctic Circle in search of an uncharted island and an albino penguin. He staged [their search] as a concert and light show at the Wollman Rink in Central Park and also made a film about it. The work delves to the heart of things I’m always thinking about. One: We’re not independent artists. We’re always playing with each other. Two: It’s such a gesture of abundance to say, “I have questions and I need help answering them. And I’m searching for miracles with people I love.” I also adore its sheer absurdity — getting a giant boat; going to Antarctica; an opera, dancers and a robotic penguin on an ice rink. It’s layered levels of More! More! More!
A work of their own that they’re excited about
“Among the Flowers I Learned to Love: A Garden of Decreation” (2026)
I’m a lover of a side-of-the-road meadow, cultivated by nothing but seeds blowing in the wind. For the courtyard installation at MoMA PS1, I bred the flowers with the amazing nursery Issima and planted them alongside things that people would consider weeds and invasive species — so a lot of Queen Anne’s lace and yarrow. There are also over 60 trees: river birch, cedars, three smoke trees and some pawpaws. The giant teddy bear has her butt in the air and is called “The Pleasure Principle.” You climb up and then slide through a hole in the butt and exit through the mouth. My friend Oliver Leith composed music to be played in the garden and inside the bear. As you slide through, you also hear one of my poems. I wanted people to fall into something and come out different — like with a dream. You allow yourself to be swallowed and spit back out into a little pollinating garden that wants to hold you in all of its magic and chaos.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
