Last week Solange Knowles opened Seventy States at the Tate Modern. Following her recent album A Seat at the Table (2016,) which explores womanhood and racial struggles in America today, the London museum invited the singer to respond to its current exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. Seventy States was created in collaboration with long term collaborator Carlota Guerra, it features an installation by Ricardo Basbaum and a site specific project directed by Alan Del Rio Ortiz We sleep in our clothes, (because we’re warriors of the night.)

Inspired by a photograph of artist Betye Saar and the role she played in the Black arts movement in the 1970s, Solange reflects on Black womanhood and the themes of Black identity within her own work made of gifs, texts and poems, videos and photographs.

“There would be no hesitation should I be asked to describe myself today. I am a Black woman. A woman yes, but a Black woman first and last. Black womanhood has been at the root of my entire existence since birth,” she stated.
“During the creation of A Seat at the Table and my deeper exploration into my own identity, I experienced many different states of being, and mind throughout my journey […] I decided to do this through a visual language. I wanted to create this language to help me to get closer to the balance I yearned to be closer to and express. I wanted to create a meditation and mediation using movement, repetition, symmetry, color theory, landscape and scenography, as my own individualised protest.”

Check out her digital performance here.

Cover Image | via facebook