Solange Knowles debuts with her first public sculpture: large-scale work unveiled on New York’s High Line

Grammy-winning musician and interdisciplinary artist Solange Knowles will debut her first large-scale public sculpture on New York’s High Line. The work will be unveiled as part of the ‘Unfinished Projects’ exhibition, running September 24–27, 2026 at the Chelsea Market Passage of the High Line, supported by Google Chrome, with an accompanying online digital experience.

Google Chrome invited Solange — alongside musician PinkPantheress, who contributes ballet shoes designed by her, and NFL star Joe Burrow, who brings a customized chess set — to bring an unfinished idea to life and share the process with the public. Solange’s work will be shown ‘in progress,’ not fully finished: visitors will see the making process as well, not just the result.

The sculpture stems from a sketch the artist made seven years ago. She describes the work as an exploration of ‘how we process space and structure,’ with the aim of breaking the barrier between artist and audience. According to the project’s page, the work is ‘designed to load electrical conductivity through form and to track material change over time as it interacts with light, touch and human energy.’ She sees public sculpture as a way of extending performance to the viewer through the everyday gestures of standing in space.

The sculpture debut follows a long interdisciplinary artistic journey. In 2013, Solange founded the creative agency and archive Saint Heron; she has performed at New York’s Guggenheim Museum (2017), at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (2017) and at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (2019), closed the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and presented the work ‘Metatronia (Metatron’s Cube)’ at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2018). She was named Artist of the Year by the Harvard Foundation (2018), composed the score for the New York City Ballet (2022) — the second Black woman to compose for the New York ballet — and curated the ‘Bridge-s’ performance series at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (2019). She has also spoken about the influence of sculptor John Chamberlain, whose work she first encountered at the Chinati Foundation around 2008/2009.

Source: Artsy