Bethany Collins’s State Songs track nineteenth-century ballads whose meanings have drifted over the course of their broader histories. Beginning with American songs from the Library of Congress collection, Collins’s Rose Ballads (2020–present) trace and complicate the lyrical symbolism of the rose, which would later become the official flower of the United States. Employing the same method, works such as Dixie’s Land (1859–2001) (2020–22) compile 10 versions of the song Dixie, or Dixie’s Land, from key moments in American history, ranging from the original 1859 version written by Dan Emmet for a minstrel show in Ohio to a 2001 version written by René Marie, which morphs into Abel Meeropol’s powerful 1937 anti-lynching poem, “Strange Fruit.” In parallel, the works on paper comprising Bonnie Blue Flag (2023–present) present renditions of “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” a song known for its popularity among Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.
Throughout her State Songs, Collins engages the concept of the contrafactum—a musical term describing a song where the text is altered while its melody remains the same. Transposing them into the minor key and partially obscuring them with gestural charcoal illustrations, Collins speaks to both past and present turbulence. Evoking recent protests and centuries-old acts of violence, Collins’s State Songs attest to the artist’s belief that “language is . . . a prism through which to explore history and the nuance of racial and national identities. And struggling with the duality of language—its potential and inevitable failure to make sense of the world—remains the basis for my making.”