This story is taken from the Freedom issue of LOVE magazine. Order a copy here.

Freedom isn’t just a subject in Solange’s practice, it’s the structure holding everything together. Music remains her foundation, but her work continually pushes beyond sound, moving into visual art, choreography, design, and architecture. Rather than shifting disciplines, she lets them overlap, creating a body of work that is fluid and expansive while still deeply connected.

Since her debut Solo Star (2002), Solange has built a career that resists category. A Seat at the Table (2016) earned her a Grammy and a Billboard No. 1, while When I Get Home (2019) expanded her oeuvre into film and experimental performance. Alongside her albums, she has staged work at the Hammer Museum, LACMA, the Getty, and at the 2019 Venice Biennale. In 2022, Solange became the first Black woman to compose a score for the New York City Ballet.

In parallel with her albums, Solange has steadily developed a visual art practice. Through Saint Heron, the multidisciplinary institution she founded, she continues to shape infrastructures for cultural preservation and experimentation. Central to this work is the Eldorado Ballroom series, a live performance program that reimagines the landmark as both historical monument and site of contemporary practice, honoring Black artistic lineage while carrying it forward. In late September, the Saint Heron Library opened for the first time with a zine dedicated to architect Amaza Lee Meredith. Two more publications and new glass decanter sculptures in the Small Matter Art Objects collection will follow this fall.

The throughline running through her art is not expansion alone but a continuity of forms. Each project carries its own language while remaining connected to her other works across music, film, performance, and installation. Together they mark a practice that builds structures for preserving and reimagining memory and experience.

KATJA HORVAT The theme of the issue is freedom— what does
freedom mean to you?

SOLANGE KNOWLES It is the ability to wake up in the morning and set one’s own compass in every sense. Of course, we all have obligations that determine how we must show up in the world as a means of survival. Yet within the grey areas surrounding those obligations, freedom lies in the ability to choose how to fill those spaces with one’s own colors, energies, and life force. For me, growing up with the desire to be an artist and to create, I had to negotiate with myself about what that path would require and what it would look like in my life. I knew freedom had to be a core element of it, because without that foundation, the work and the life around it would lose meaning.

KH Is there a line between who you are as an artist and who you are in your day-to-day life?

SK I try to create small rituals that blur the lines between art and living, whether it be pouring water and thinking about its source, or noticing moments that feel ordinary but carry weight. Those philosophies guide me when I create, but right now I am enjoying showing up authentically as myself. I am not in an album cycle or promoting anything, which gives me space to slow down.

There is a Legacy Russell quote that talks about how Black artists deserve slowness, and that stayed with me. I feel I am in that space now, free from the demand for speed or constant excellence, creating from gratitude. Everything does not have to be a statement or performance. I get to be mundane and show up, while honoring my past selves, and right now, especially my teenage self.

KH Honoring the self, yes. I often struggle with being taken seriously in this industry, whether because of gender, how I look, or how I dress. As a response, I overachieve and then question if I am doing it for myself or to prove a point.

SK I feel the same. People say Black people deserve to be mediocre, and while no one strives for that, but we do deserve to just be, and not be held to impossible standards of constantly raising the bar and reinventing the wheel. For me, creating used to often come from a place of perfection and reinvention, and all of these places that kept me competing with myself.

Over the past year, I have tried to quiet those voices and make space for authenticity in whatever I am feeling in that present moment. And then there is impermanence. For so long, I felt everything carried too much weight, even a single photo, when in reality, time is fleeting.

Lately, friends have sent me videos of people rediscovering “Crush,” a song I made at fourteen. Back then, I had no idea if anyone even heard it. Now, twenty years later, it has new life and meaning. It reminds me that permanence is not real. Our work grows and shifts just as we do.

KH What is your take on autonomy versus legacy?

SK I am a person who is constantly creating for the future. It is very rare that I am ever approaching a project thinking about nowness. I am always thinking, how will this feel in ten years, who will it reach? in the same way that I talk about “Crush.” I might not have known the impact of how it would connect with people, but I am always thinking about future worlds and future generations rediscovering this work, and timelessness. And so I think that in that respect, legacy does become more urgent, and is important in the way that it helps people to truly find safety in themselves. And that is such a beautiful thing, to imagine that someone could actually feel safer in their own body because of something I make.

KH When a new work begins for you, does it tend to appear first as a sound, an image, or…?

SK It always starts with a story, and lately that has translated into documentation. When I imagine a sound, a narrative, or a landscape, I now think about how it will be documented, because that is what will live beyond my existence. Having made books, edited books, curated a library, and interacted with printed matter, I am now in a space of thinking about the history books and how this ephemera will carry on—the tangibility of someone touching it, feeling it, and how transformative the sound and the story can become. In the past, it was often about an image, but for my next musical project, it is about telling a story and then figuring out what the sound of that story is, what the world is that surrounds it, and how it will ultimately be recorded and remembered.

KH How do you know when a project is finished and has fulfilled its purpose?

SK I think we talk a lot about gut feelings and intuition, but there are also physical elements that manifest in completion. When you are still wrestling with something, it can show up in your stomach, or as tension in your hands, shoulders, or knees. For me, it is in my legs, and there is an ease that slowly leaves the body. The brain will always question and dissect, saying I could have done this or that might have been better. I know people who remix and remaster old albums and still feel they are not done. But there is an ease in your body that tells you this story is over, or just beginning, and this is one part of how I will tell it.

KH Never good enough is so real. What I try to remind myself about past work or mistakes is that, in the moment, it felt right. Looking back is not fair, because we are not the same people we were then.

SK That is so true. I think that first night’s rest after you deliver something is a real teller too. You are either up all night sick, or you are knocked out with a peace and an ease that comes from the release of letting go.

KH How do you manage the intensity of creating, being celebrated, and having so many people project onto you, while still protecting your own peace and sense of self?

SK I think part of the reason I have leaned into taking my time and embracing slowness is because the adrenaline of constantly creating, being celebrated, and receiving praise or criticism can feel like emotional warfare. Even the positive aspects are tough to digest, and the next day you wake up with the depletion and the low of here I am, nobody else is here. I have to pace myself, be quiet, and sit in silence. That contrast between high and low can feel hard. Because of that, I try to be selective about how and where I show up. It is not that I do not want to go out and enjoy being with my peers, but I often wake up feeling socially, spiritually, or mentally drained, even self-critical in reflecting on how I showed up. Highly stimulating environments make it difficult to show up as your best self. I love quiet hangs and more intimate ways of connection.

KH What is your escape in all this?

SK Nature for sure. Over the past few years I have turned to the elements as a mirror for myself. About an hour from my home there is a waterfall I feel very connected to. In the spring, when the melted ice caps feed it, it is powerful and thunderous but too cold to enter. In the summer it slows, gentler and more inviting, until by August it is barely dripping. Lately I have been going twice a week to say my goodbyes as it dries, bringing friends along. It has taught me to appreciate the way God is always working, and that sometimes things are not meant to be in abundance. As I grow older, I lean into that balance, remembering the elements are larger than me, that everything has cause and response, and that the way we listen can tell us the most about ourselves.

KH You speak of God’s work and trusting in a higher purpose. What’s your relationship with faith?

SK My relationship with faith really started at a young age. I had a profound experience at a church camp when I was about ten. I felt an encounter with who I know to be God, and it was so impactful, so full of peace. When people talk about serenity, that is not a word I use often, but what I felt in my body, mind, and heart in that moment was the living definition of it. I feel very lucky to have had such a life-changing, life-affirming, God-affirming moment that showed me this is real. At the same time, it created a lot of fear in me because it was so big, so powerful, that it required surrender. I have been working on it ever since. And surrender comes in stages.

KH It’s also scary.

SK It is terrifying. Anything that brought me back to that silence and vastness would shake me to my core. I found myself running toward it and away from it. My last album was about that act of surrendering to faith. I have been nurtured by many practices, and the way glory shows up in my life has given me a richness I am grateful for. But surrendering is still a work in progress. I feel blessed to see God in a waterfall, in a church, in music, and in the kindness of a stranger. For me, the practice is leaning into those small acts of faith, while learning to surrender to the vastness of it all.

KH What are some of your main influences?

SK Honestly, my friends inspire me the most right now. I’m in awe of the way they keep showing up with courage, pushing through resistance, and finding ways to keep going. I have also been inspired by Wangechi Mutu’s work and by the futurism of Black Cancer women like Octavia Butler, Missy Elliott, and my friend Toyin Odutola, who are constantly building worlds that do not yet exist, and [by] what it means to be in that kind of cosmic company. In the Saint Heron Library, there is a book called Madam Zenobia’s Space Age Lucky Eleven Dream And Astrology Book (1975). It’s her own zodiac translation by word association, with a Rolodex of words you calculate from your birthday. It challenged me to think about how the mind can build its own metrics and systems. That has shaped me as I move into classical works that require composition and scoring. The musicians and engineers I work with know there is a grid, a system, a chart I have been developing. I often look at Yvonne Rainer’s choreographic charts, the way she sketched movement into symbols no one could interpret at first. There is power in creating your own systems for how your work is documented and understood.

KH Let’s talk about the Eldorado Ballroom and how you chose not to start the series in Houston, but came there in the third iteration.

SK That was our homecoming. My vision for programming Houston was so expansive that we needed time to build the right foundation, but bringing it back was incredible. Seven nights of my wildest dreams realized, and I feel deeply connected to that work because live performance has been such a journey for me. The connection between music and its interpretation on stage is sacred. A performance can transform someone’s night, carry them for months, and change the way they see the world.

I think of Rosie Ledet, Zydeco royalty, whose name and impact are still unknown to much of the world. For her to command a genre where men still dominate is extraordinary. Or Kara Jackson, whose words name truths people often avoid. To connect the lineage between artists like Cara and Rosie, one from Chicago and one from Louisiana, both using poetry and language to channel their most intimate thoughts, feels sacred. Presenting it in three cities has been powerful, seeing how geography and regional energy reshape the relationship to performance each time.

KH As part of Eldorado Ballroom Houston, the “On Dissonance” program showcased orchestral works by Julia Perry, Tania León, and yourself. Tell me more about writing your piece and positioning it in dialogue with theirs.

SK I started listening to classical music more intensely in high school, and discovering Julia Perry was transformative. To know she created Homunculus in the ’50s, a decade before Terry Riley or Steve Reich, while composing above her father’s dental practice, is extraordinary. She was breaking ground with such nuance and courage, yet her story was never properly documented. That makes me want to be sure her name is remembered. With Tania León, I think about how people often try to put women in competition in terms of “who did it first.” She composed “Agua de Florida” long before I wrote “Florida Water,” and to me that is the blueprint. Her mastery and vision opened a path, showing there was space to create classical and contemporary compositions when other forms were not enough. That night was also the first time I presented Villanelle for Times, my score for the New York City Ballet, outside of the ballet. Without movement or costumes, I worried people might become bored by the repetition, but I had to trust my choices. For me, that repetition is grounding, it is warmth and light. To sit beside Perry and León made the night humbling and transformative.

KH In all this… what do you fear?

SK One of my biggest fears is that in years from now, the work of Black women will not be documented with the same urgency and care as [that of ] our contemporaries. There has been a renaissance of visibility and celebrating our work in the last decade, but the risk of erasure is still very real. That fear has made me almost obsessive about archiving.

So many of the works by Black women artists from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s I admire are impossible to find. I have to work hard to reach their families, colleges, and schools, to put the pieces together to better learn their stories, while for Black male artists there are books, documentaries, and records already in libraries. I have been working with Saint Heron for four years on a book about Amaza Lee Meredith, a self-taught architect who developed Sag Harbor. It took years to track down her photos and blueprints, and thank God for those who preserved them. But I fear this will keep happening if we leave it to those in charge now.

KH I have a tattoo that says, “Rejection breeds obsession.” And from what I am getting, I feel like that is the case with you too?

SK One hundred percent! And I think it’s warranted. It doesn’t come from unwarranted fear or paranoia, it comes from lived reality. If I can play any part in making sure those fears do not come to life, then that is what I’m going to do.

Hair JAWARA WAUCHOPE at ART PARTNER, Makeup MIGUEL RAMOS

Nails DAWN STERLING at E.D.M.A, Set Design JAVIER IRIGOYEN at LALALAND ARTISTS, Light Direction EDUARDO SILVA, Digitech ANDREA BEDNAREK, Photography Assistant FALLOU SECK, Fashion Assistants MESSIAH LUMPKIN and KASH OLUMIDE, Tailor TAE YOSHIDA, Hair Assistant YETUNDE EGUNJOBI, Nails Assistant DANIEL TALVEREZ, Set Decoration AKALYHA REED, Set Design Assistants SYAVASH JEFFERSON, MATTHIAS HEUMEIER, ERICK BENAVIDES, and BOBBY CASEY, Location PRIVATE HOME IN GREENWICH, CT, Production KITTEN US, Post Production ETHAN SKAATES

Special thanks to JUSTINE FOIRY