Between the time of her celebrated Water Compositions (1969–71) and nylon R.S.V.P. sculptures (mid-1970s onward), Nengudi was immersed in her Spirit Flags. These evocative works comprise boldly colored fabrics cut into the form of human-sized silhouettes, which Nengudi then affixed with ropes to the walls and edges of rooms, and even staged outdoors in alleyways and across fire escapes. As the sculptures pick up currents and breezes, they move, animated both physically and in spirit.

Nengudi's time in New York, from 1971 to 1974, though brief compared to her years in Los Angeles and later Colorado, was immensely formative for the artist. Living uptown in Spanish Harlem, she quickly joined a network of Black artists and thinkers eager to incorporate elements of Black life and identity into their work, whether it be through the body, history or culture.

She translated these impressions into two-dimensional forms made of flag material, with grommets inserted around the edge of each figure. Using nylon cord, Nengudi suspended them so they might "begin to talk and move about" in the wind—as she described in a fellowship statement at the time—and then photographed them in situ.

Spirituality—as translated through physical forms, such as the body and materials, both natural and manmade—has been a key notion in Nengudi's work since the start of her career. Moreover, the Spirit Flags' use of tension and suspension echoes many of the elements the artist would develop in her R.S.V.P. works, for which she stretched nylon stockings often from one wall to another in ways that call to mind limbs and sinews.