| About the 2025 award: $50,000 to support the creation and documentation of God’s Peace: Bind, an art installation that explores shared human connection through the universal act of braiding, storytelling and spiritual reflection. |
Ricky Davii is a mixed-medium artist from St. Louis, Mo., whose practice spans hair, visual art, music and production. Rooted in the belief that the most ordinary rituals carry the most extraordinary histories, his work creates environments where viewers are invited not just to observe but to feel, remember and reconnect.
He began his creative journey in 2010 as a hairstylist under the name Seto McCoy, with work appearing in Vogue, ELLE, i-D Magazine, The New York Times and Essence, alongside collaborations with global brands. In 2019, he founded Slick Crew Studio, a full-service visual production and e-commerce studio built for indie brands. As a queer Black creative, the work has always been about more than aesthetics: it's about who gets to be seen and how.
In 2024, Davii became the inaugural artist in residence for the August Wilson Archive at the University of Pittsburgh, where they created the multimedia exhibition "Ev'ry Thing That Glitta, Ain't," exhibited across Hillman Library, Museum Lab and Assemble Gallery. They were selected to travel to Japan for an artist retreat with ASafeSpaceMentor to develop their current project, which was published in PopSugar.
That project is GOD'S PEACE::BIND, a world-record-breaking braid installation targeting 1,426 meters in length that explores how braiding connects cultures across generations and geographies. Accompanied by a short film and original music, it will premiere in Pittsburgh, NYC, STL and Art Basel Miami throughout 2027. This is the first of three interconnected projects forming the GOD'S PEACE trilogy.