Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation

Dame Sonia Boyce DBE RA (b. London, 1962) is an interdisciplinary artist and academic working across film, drawing, photography, print, sound, and installation. In 2022, she presented FEELING HER WAY for the British Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale for which she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Boyce came to prominence in the early 1980s as a key figure in the burgeoning British Black Arts Movement with figurative pastel drawings and photo collages that addressed issues of race and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, Boyce has shifted significantly to embrace a social practice that invites improvisation, collaboration, movement, and sound with other people.

Mark Hudson is the art critic of the Independent and a London editor-at-large for the Brooklyn Rail. His books include Titian, the Last Days, Our Grandmothers’ Drums (winner of the Thomas Cook Award and the Somerset Maugham Award), Coming Back Brockens (winner of the AT&T Award for Non-Fiction) and The Music in my Head. He has written for the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, Financial Times and many other publications.