WePresent, the award-winning digital arts platform of WeTransfer, unveils its new online centre celebrating art, film, music, literature, photography, and illustration from around the world. The new-look platform premiers exclusive cultural commissions from Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter, visual artist Solange Knowles, alongside artist and activist Ai Weiwei and author Megan Nolan.
Now WePresent operates as a team of curators, editors, and producers to offer creatives the tools, space, freedom, and support to expand beyond the traditional confines of the gallery and exhibition space. Through pioneering collaborations with emerging talent and global trailblazers such as Marina Abramovic, Renell Medrano, Lisa Taddeo and Riz Ahmed, WePresent continues to reach WeTransfer’s 87 million monthly active users in 190 countries, with new creative experiences every month displayed on the iconic platform.
To mark the new era of the platform, Solange Knowles – a pioneer across the fields of music, visual art, and performance – follows Marina Abramovic as WePresent’s first Guest Curator in 2021. The year-long collaboration between Solange and WeTransfer is designed to inspire radical conversations that amplify vital voices and conceptual imagining across art, design and architecture. The first part of Solange’s Curatorship will see her spotlight artists from around the world including Dozie Kanu, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Autumn Knight and Jacolby Satterwhite on WeTransfer. The digital exhibition will be supported by features on WePresent detailing Solange’s curation and what it is about the artists’ practice that make them unique.
“I am delighted to be working with WePresent this year to uplift vital voices in art and design, starting with a selection of artists who I feel are pushing boundaries to create new worlds and experiences for audiences to discover for years to come”
Solange Knowles, Founder, Creative & Art Director of Saint Heron
Solange Knowles: Guest Curator: Part One is now live exclusively on WePresent with Part Two to be unveiled in Summer 2022, and Part Three in Autumn 2022.
A Manifesto by Ai Weiwei for WePresent
Exclusively launching on WePresent from 12th April– Ai Weiwei, one of the most important artists and activists working today, constantly questions and addresses political oppression and the power dwelling within a human being. For WePresent’s ‘A Manifesto By’ series, Ai Weiwei has written a 10-rules to share messages of freedom and empowerment to millions of people worldwide. Ai Weiwei’s commission is the latest in the Manifesto series which includes musician Willie Nelson, Patrisse Cullors the co-founder of BLM and Nadya Tolokonnikova from Pussy Riot.
WePresent Literally Series: Ways of Seeing by Megan Nolan
Exclusively available on WePresent from 12th April -WePresent reveals an essay penned by author of bestselling novel “Acts of Desperation” Megan Nolan, exploring our relationship with social media and how we present ourselves in the online sphere. Part of the WePresent ‘Literally’ Series, ‘Ways of Seeing’ is a nod to the John Berger book of the same name, with Megan describing the sensation of documenting and sharing a life, while simultaneously watching other people do the same. What does it do to us, and what happens when we stop?
About the curator
Solange Knowles is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and visual artist. A pioneer across the fields of music, art, and performance, Solange’s work serves as a deeply intimate portrayal of Black womanhood in the US. In 2013 Solange established Saint Heron, a multidisciplinary platform, studio, and creative agency with a mission to build spaces that engage radical conversation in thoughtful, original works that amplify vital voices and conceptual imagining across art, design, architecture, fashion, and literature. Most recently, Saint Heron has launched its ceramics residency program, which promotes the spatial sensibilities and creative innovation of Black and Brown women practicing ceramic art. Solange’s work in music and the arts has led to her being named the 2022 NYU Global Trailblazer Award for Creative and Artistic Excellence, Harvard University’s Artist of the Year in 2018. In February 2020, Solange received the inaugural Lena Horne Prize, which honored excellence at the intersection of arts and activism.
Solange has conducted performance art shows across the globe including at the Sydney Opera House (2020), the 58th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2019), The Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2019), the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Germany (2019), the Guggenheim Museum, NYC (2017), and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (2017). She has exhibited video art installations at London’s Tate Modern and premiered the interdisciplinary video and dance performance piece, Metatronia, which featured Metatron’s Cube, 2018; a sculpture conceptualized and created by Solange, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Her work in other artistic mediums and music have led to a defining career of music, visual art, and activism. @solangeknowles
