Their Eyes Were Watching God ​is ​Pérez’s first solo show in New York and will run through February 13 of this year. It ​nods to Zora Neale Hurston’s novel in name and theme; ​in cadence with each of his solo shows being titled after literary works of Black authors. The exhibit embodies Black presence through quotidian activities— braiding hair, playing cards, taking a walk in Brooklyn— to harp on shared experience; and what it means to be a community, to bond, to create intimacy, to care, to build resilience, and to live life across geography.

Pérez uses materials from his own environment in his work: blunt wraps, discarded chip bags or candy wrappers, a pack of Newports, and so on as a living breathing memory of the work’s respective community. The vivid colors of everyday fashion, graffiti, and discarded flyers affixed to scaffold walls combine to inspire Pérez’s textured imagery. ​Their Eyes Were Watching God evokes a certain playfulness and vibrance juxtaposed with hidden symbolism of music, fashion, and Black history— emphasizing how Black perspective exists across space and time.