British Afro-Caribbean visual artist (born 1962)
Dame Sonia Dawn Boyce DBE RA (born 1962[1]) is a British Afro-Caribbean artist and educator, living and working in London. She is a Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.[2] Boyce's research interests explore art as a social practice and the critical and contextual debates that arise from this area of study. Boyce has been closely collaborating with other artists since 1990 with a focus on collaborative work, frequently involving improvisation and unplanned performative actions on the part of her collaborators. Boyce's work involves a variety of media, such as drawing, print, photography, video, and sound. Her art explores "the relationship between sound and memory, the dynamics of space, and incorporating the spectator".[3] To date, Boyce has taught Fine Art studio practice for more than 30 years in several art colleges across the UK.[3]
In March 2016, Boyce was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, becoming the first black female Royal Academician.[4] The Royal Academy was founded in 1768.
In February 2020, Boyce was selected by the British Council to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale 2022, the first black woman to do so.[5] In April 2022, Boyce won the Venice Biennale's top Golden Lion prize with her work Feeling Her Way.[6]
Early life and education
Born in Islington, London, in 1962, Boyce attended Eastlea Comprehensive School in Canning Town, East London, from 1973 to 1979.[7] From 1979 to 1980, she completed a Foundation Course in Art & Design at East Ham College of Art and Technology, going on to earn a BA degree in Fine Art at Stourbridge College from 1980 to 1983 in the West Midlands.[7][8]
Career
Boyce works with a range of media including photography, installation and text.[8] She gained prominence as part of the Black British cultural renaissance of the 1980s.[9][10] Her work also references feminism.[11] Roy Exley (2001) has written: "The effect of her work has been to re-orientate and re-negotiate the position of Black or Afro-Caribbean art within the cultural mainstream."[12]
An early exhibition in which Boyce participated was in 1983 at the Africa Centre, London, entitled Five Black Women. Her early works were large chalk-and-pastel drawings depicting friends, family and childhood experiences. Drawing from her background she often included depictions of wallpaper patterns and bright colours associated with the Caribbean. Through this work, the artist examined her position as a Black woman in Britain and the historical events in which that experience was rooted.[13] She also took part in the 1983 exhibition Black Women Time Now.[14]
In 1989, Boyce was a part of a group of four female artists who created an exhibition called The Other Story, which was the first display of British African, Caribbean, and Asian Modernism.[15]
In her later works, Boyce used diverse media including digital photography to produce composite images depicting contemporary Black life. Although her focus is seen to have shifted away from specific ethnic experiences, her themes continue to be the experiences of a Black woman living in a white society, and how religion, politics and sexual politics made up that experience.[13]
In 2018, as part of a retrospective exhibition of her art at Manchester Art Gallery, Boyce was invited by the curators of the gallery to make new work in dialogue with the collection's 18th- and 19th-century galleries, for which Boyce invited performance artists to engage with these works in these galleries in "a non-binary way".[16] As part of one of these events, the artists decided to temporarily remove J. W. Waterhouse's painting Hylas and the Nymphs from the gallery wall, prompting a wide discussion of issues of censorship and curatorial decision-making, interpretation and judgement, by gallery audiences and in the media.[17]
Boyce has taught widely and uses workshops as part of her creative process, and her works can be seen in many national collections.[18] Boyce's works are held in the collections of Tate Modern,[19] Victoria & Albert Museum, the Government Art Collection,[20] British Council and the Arts Council Collection at the Southbank Centre.[21]
In 2018, she was the subject of the BBC Four documentary film Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art History, in which Brenda Emmanus followed Boyce as she travelled the UK, highlighting the history of Black artists and modernism.[22] Boyce led a team in preparing an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery that focused on artists of African and Asian descent who have played a part in shaping the history of British art.[23][15]
It was announced in February 2020 that Boyce had been selected as the first Black woman to represent the United Kingdom at the Venice Biennale; chosen by the British Council, she would produce a major solo exhibition. The British Council's director of visual arts, Emma Dexter, stated that Boyce's inclusive and powerful work would be a perfect selection for this significant time in UK history. Boyce first attended the Biennale in 2015, she was a part of curator Okwui Enwezor's "All the World's Features" exhibition.[15][24] Her piece, Feeling Her Way, was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2022 exhibition.[6][25]
Art market
Boyce has been represented by Hauser & Wirth since 2023.[30] She previously worked with Simon Lee Gallery from 2021 to 2023.[31]
Personal life
Boyce's partner is curator David A. Bailey, with whom she has two daughters.[32][33]
In February 2023, Boyce appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.[34][35]
Medium
In her early artistic years, Boyce used chalk and pastel to make drawings of her friends, family and herself. She graduated later to incorporate photography, graphic design, film, and caricature to convey very political messages within her work. The incorporation of collage allowed her to explore more complex pieces. It is important to note Boyce's utilization of caricature within her work. The caricature is historically meant to showcase exaggerated features of individuals. They are often grotesque and can incite negative perceptions of their subjects. By using caricatures, Boyce allows herself to reclaim them in her own image.[36]
Message
Boyce's work is politically affiliated. She utilizes a variety of mediums within the same work to convey messages revolving around Black representation, perceptions of the black body and pervasive notions that arose from scientific racism. Within her bodies of work, Boyce works to convey the personal isolation that results from being black in a white society. In her work she explores notions of the Black Body as the "other". Commonly, she uses collage to convey a body of art that incites a complicated history. Boyce rose as a prominent artist in the 1980s when the Black Cultural Renaissance took place. The movement arose out of opposition to Margaret Thatcher's brand of conservatism and her cabinet's policies. Using this societal backdrop, Boyce takes conventional narratives surrounding the black body and turns it upside down. Through her art she conveys a hope to overturn ethnographic notions of race that pervaded throughout slavery and after the slaves had been emancipated.[36]
