Sonia Boyce on art and education

This event can be enjoyed in person at the Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, or via a digital livestream.

As part of a series of six special talks by artists and architects, Sonia Boyce explores art as a social practice and the role of art education today.

Sonia Boyce OBE RA is an interdisciplinary artist and academic working across film, photography, print, sound and installation. With an emphasis on collaborative work, she questions artistic authorship and cultural difference as well as exploring the intersection of personal and political subjectivities. In 2022 she presented Feeling Her Way for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, for which she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Boyce has taught Fine Art studio practice for over thirty years in several art colleges across the UK and is currently Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.

This special lecture is part of our Artists on Art series, a set of six lectures by leading artists and architects, exploring art-making, art education and creativity today. 2023 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Royal Academy’s first president, who lectured on the role of artists and art education at the RA Schools in his ground-breaking Discourses on Art.

Since our foundation over 250 years ago the Royal Academy has been a place for artists, where art is taught, made and shaped. Inspired by the questions Reynolds first posed, Artists on Art addresses what it means to be an artist in the 21st century.

The event will be accompanied by speech to text transcription courtesy of Stagetext.