Members of the Klan bombed the church and killed all the little girls, it was a Black church during segregation. There are two recent paintings which are about 9ft by 9ft, one is called Four Little Girls, and it was about the four children who were preparing for Sunday school in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I felt that if I didn’t express myself, I may be gone, so I would rather say what I wanted to say on canvas. It was after the head injury as a passenger in a car accident, where I realised I could have died, that I started doing my issue-related work. I picketed in Woolworth, Philadelphia, because of their segregated lunch counters in the South. HP: I was born during segregation, and I was in college during the Civil Rights Movement. Where does your visual language meet your politics? How do they intersect? W*: You are an artist of many mediums and a political artist. Courtesy the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery and Victoria Miro Howardena Pindell, Text, 1975 Ink on paper collage. I’m sure a lot of this DNA came about because of enslavement, because there was so much rape of enslaved women during the African slave trade. I have Zulu DNA, South African, South Indian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, Portuguese, Finnish, Scandinavian, Basque Spanish, Native American, Inuit, German, Irish, Greek, Sicilian, Cypriot and Bahamian.

I think the biggest thing of all that’s happened in terms of a new language is that people can now access their DNA. Various cultures have their own visual and verbal languages, which are also influenced by other cultures, which can create a hybrid. One thing I think is important is to explore how different cultures name things and read colours. One of the things that helps us to have a new language is the expansion of the world wide web, although many people in poor countries don’t have access. Howardena Pindell: First of all, the new language would be inclusive, both verbal and visual. Why did you feel you needed a new language and how did you come to it? Courtesy the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery and Victoria Miro Wallpaper*: The title of the show is ‘A New Language’.

Howardena Pindell, Free, White and 21, 1980.

World wide web wallpaper