What’s on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mind? Policy, policing, potholes, surely. But this week, the Studio Museum in Harlem also made the list.
The freshly 35-year-old mayor shared on Instagram that he spent his birthday at the museum yesterday. According to him, one painting on view left a lingering impression: The Hypnotist (2026) by Atlanta native Taylor Simmons. The work, he wrote, was “just incredible.”
Simmons is a 2026 artist-in-residence, along with Simonette Quamina and Derriann Pharr, in the first cohort to work and exhibit in the museum’s new building. A documentarian of sorts, he works across painting, prints, and drawings, rendering mundane scenes made fantastic when filtered through dreams. Found and personal imagery are threaded with pop culture, set in an electrified palette, and layered so that body and background bleed across black lines.
It’s fair to say the story of The Hypnotist is up to interpretation. Perhaps a priest stands at the pulpit, enthralling a few packed pews, while someone is clearly on the way out: a car idles behind him. Beyond them both, the sun is setting. It’s easy to see why the painting resonated with the mayor: a loosely sketched crowd, animated by a restless beat, could be New York.
“Fear and strength tend to be tied to the types of figures I paint, but I hope to explore the ‘wh’” of it all. I am interested in the many lives or meanings these figures can have depending on the viewer. I like exploring the emotions of the viewer and giving them space to question their own perception,” Simmons told FAD Magazine in 2022, adding, “The narrative ambiguity can create a vastness.”
Simmons’s works can be viewed in “A sustained becoming: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2026” through January 3.