For the reopening of MoMA's new extension, Zoë Paul developed a site-specific installation for the street-level window in front of the Modern. Incorporating styles of picture-making from across history—ancient cave paintings, Byzantine iconography, classical Greek vases, as well as the digital pixels that compose virtual reality—Paul's bead curtains are made from thousands of handmade stoneware, terra cotta, and porcelain beads. Engaging with MoMA's architecture, Paul's works are inspired by the curtains hung in doorways in the Mediterranean, which allow easy flow between public and private spaces. Ambient light and the motion of passersby make the figures depicted by Paul’s curtains appear to come to life, with a kind of flickering that resembles early film animation. The beads serve a function similar to that of computer pixels, coalescing to produce a triptych of figures—in the artist’s words, a “celebratory, spiritual evocation of bodily representation, focusing on musculature, strength, dynamism, and the spiritually erotic.”

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