Theaster Gates at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC

Plantation Lullabies is the second instalment in Theaster Gates’s ‘Processions’ performance series at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The work introduces unexpected and unexplored connections between sacred music, African and African American culture and history, theatre, world dance and chant.

Inspired by American singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello’s influential 2014 album Comet, Come to Me, Gates has invited multi-disciplinary artists, including Mikel Avery and Ellaina Lewis to create an evening of musical expression.

Re-examining the negative imagining of Black bodies and Black lives, Plantation Lullabies brings intelligence, creativity and humour to these objects to show their contemporary relevance.