Solange Knowles 2

TEXT by CHLOE SULTAN

Los Angeles: For most of Solange Knowles’ adult life, she has had the same loft; a quiet, serene oasis set above the 24-hour buzz of downtown Hollywood. The space is a mix of organic modernism, her own furniture designs, and Black art and vernacular objects she has collected over the years. It is the private residuum of a nomadic life spent travelling around the world and making art. Beyond all of this, the space looks very fly. It almost goes without saying, Solange Knowles is very fly.

If there has been one constant in Solange’s multidisciplinary practice, it has been a deep, personal investment in world-making, in creating spaces both interior and exterior where aesthetics and affect, the seen and the felt, collide and form architecture. These are sometimes built out in the world at the scale of a territory; she has designs only capable of being surveyed from the sweep of an aerial shot, like a rodeo arena or a beached spaceship. Other times she works at the scale of a sofa in the round or a glass vase; a melody or an intonation. She is also an archivist, a collector of Black stories, our peregrinations, and the objects that carry them.

Her home is as much a site of memory as a place to live, as so many other homes are.

This loft has been there through all of it, the private island where her public investigations of space register themselves in the small, mundane arrangements of her everyday life. So much of what Solange makes is about the process of how she made it, the routines, repetitions, and rituals, the calendar of days and ways that inform how she relates to her work, the things she sees around her every day. With all of this in mind, I sat down with Solange to discuss the life of this apartment through the years, among many other things.

CC: Yeah, you’re in Hollywood Hollywood. Right there in it.

SK: I actually taught my son how to ride a bike on Hollywood Boulevard—his first bike ride was right where the stars are. There’s something about me that really loves Times Square and Hollywood, these overpopulated places with history and lights. There’s also the Capitol Records building, which is some of my favourite architecture of all time. I’m such a Cancer, a crab, a nester, where I can just not leave the house for a long period of time. So having that heartbeat and pulse of energy outside was a healthy juxtaposition for me, and I decided to turn the interior of the house into a peaceful nest. I started to collect things with the intention of keeping them as lifelong objects that would become a part of my life wherever I am, envisioning how these objects and artworks could evolve with me over the next 40, 50 years. Over the last few years it’s the space that I come to that feels like a snapshot of these different chapters of my life. It’s really sentimental for me, for sure.

CC: I love that so much. It’s interesting how certain spaces almost become teachers, teaching you how to live, shaping your daily ethics.

SK: Absolutely. One thing that really stands out to me, oddly enough, is the bathtub. It’s a Japanese soaking tub. It completely immerses you up to your neck in water, just with you sitting. And I do most of my writing, conception, and ideation for performances and installations in the bathtub. I feel like this space really taught me the power of creating in proximity to water. Even as I’ve moved around, I still carry with me everywhere those original days of working in the bathtub, which is really unconventional, and sort of nutty. I even plan my trips and where I stay on vacations around this.
The beginnings of that love for the bath really started in the loft. Those days of just coming home alone from the studio, my son being at school, and that was my safe space. I recognise it as sort of recreating the environment of a womb, feeling safety in that, trying to recreate those early attachments to my mother. The bath was my space to take care of me, to listen to myself and my body and my heart, and have those awakenings of what I was being called to do and deliver into the world. It’s been a really sacred anchor in my life.

CC: Yeah, you’re in Hollywood Hollywood. Right there in it.

SK: I actually taught my son how to ride a bike on Hollywood Boulevard—his first bike ride was right where the stars are. There’s something about me that really loves Times Square and Hollywood, these overpopulated places with history and lights. There’s also the Capitol Records building, which is some of my favourite architecture of all time. I’m such a Cancer, a crab, a nester, where I can just not leave the house for a long period of time. So having that heartbeat and pulse of energy outside was a healthy juxtaposition for me, and I decided to turn the interior of the house into a peaceful nest. I started to collect things with the intention of keeping them as lifelong objects that would become a part of my life wherever I am, envisioning how these objects and artworks could evolve with me over the next 40, 50 years. Over the last few years it’s the space that I come to that feels like a snapshot of these different chapters of my life. It’s really sentimental for me, for sure.

CC: I love that so much. It’s interesting how certain spaces almost become teachers, teaching you how to live, shaping your daily ethics.

SK: Absolutely. One thing that really stands out to me, oddly enough, is the bathtub. It’s a Japanese soaking tub. It completely immerses you up to your neck in water, just with you sitting. And I do most of my writing, conception, and ideation for performances and installations in the bathtub. I feel like this space really taught me the power of creating in proximity to water. Even as I’ve moved around, I still carry with me everywhere those original days of working in the bathtub, which is really unconventional, and sort of nutty. I even plan my trips and where I stay on vacations around this.
The beginnings of that love for the bath really started in the loft. Those days of just coming home alone from the studio, my son being at school, and that was my safe space. I recognise it as sort of recreating the environment of a womb, feeling safety in that, trying to recreate those early attachments to my mother. The bath was my space to take care of me, to listen to myself and my body and my heart, and have those awakenings of what I was being called to do and deliver into the world. It’s been a really sacred anchor in my life.

CC: The glass table and the lamp in the back corner of the main space also look like your designs.

SK: Yes. The table and the lamp reflect my interest in geometry and pyramids. I have both a circle and a pyramid tattoo. I’ve always been attracted to the pyramid, and when my mother told me later in life that I was conceived in Egypt, it made a lot of sense. I started to investigate how the pyramid lines up with a lot of constellations I’ve always felt a strong connection to. It’s like I already have the vision, and then to seek out pieces like the Massimo and Lella Vignelli table is a way to affirm my language through pieces I collect and live alongside.

I also designed an aluminium bench for the space, which was my first time working with metals. It has an etching of a Tunisian saint, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, based off a painting by Father Jerome Sanderson. I’ve had a lifelong curiosity about Black saints—Saint Heron was actually an Egyptian saint who was martyred—and during the pandemic, I became really attached to some of Saint Cyprian’s writings and found this beautiful painting of him. It reminded me of so many Black men in my life. He reminded me of my uncle Larry, his bone structure. It took four or five months of working with this artist and a metalworker to get the etching right, paying attention to every detail, trying to get the hair texture right, trying to get the ears right. I put a lot of love into it.

Another sacred object in the space: the DJ Screw tape. I was in Houston working on When I Get Home, and I had gone into Screwed Up Records one day, and they had all of the CDs of the various tapes. I was like, ‘No, I’m here to get a tape tape’. And they’re like, ‘Well, we have one left’. That was just so symbolic to me, and such a blessing to my life. It’s a really special piece to me. Framing it with the large mat was my way of making sure it took up as much space in the loft as possible. I have innovation angels, and he’s one of them for me, for life.

Published 19 April 2023
Words by Chloe Sultan
Photography by Jody Rodac