Sonia Boyce OBE is a British Afro-Caribbean artist who lives and works in London. She studied at Stourbridge College, West Midlands. Boyce’s early work addressed issues of race and gender in the media and in day-to-day life. She expressed these themes through large pastel drawings and photographic collages.
Her work has since shifted materially and conceptually by incorporating a variety of media such as photographs, collages, films, prints, drawings, installation and sound. Her recent work collaboratively brings the audience into sharper focus as an integral part of the artwork, between artist, vocalists and audience, demonstrating how cultural differences might be articulated, mediated and enjoyed. Boyce’s significant exhibitions include Five Black Women, African Centre, London (1983); Sonia Boyce: For you, only you, Magdalen College, Oxford and subsequent UK venues (2007 – 2008); and All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale, Arsenale and Giardini (2015).
She is represented in the permanent collections of Arts Council England and Tate Modern, London. In 2007, Boyce was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the arts. She was awarded an OBE in the 2019 New Year Honours, also for services to art. She is currently Professor of Fine Arts at Middlesex University, London and Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.
Nationality: British
Elected RA: 9 March 2016
Gender: Female
Preferred media: Painting, Printmaking, and Film making
2016 Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre (Dada Nice), Villa Arson, Nice
2013 Scat – Sound and Collaboration, Iniva, Rivington Place, London
2009 Like Love, Spike Island, Bristol; Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent
2007 Devotional, National Portrait Gallery, London
For you, only you, Oxford University; Locus Plus, Newcastle; Milton Keynes Gallery Offsite; Model Arts, Sligo
Crop Over, Harewood House, Leeds, Barbados Museum and Historical Society
2001 Recent Sonia Boyce: La, La, La, Douglas F Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Portland, Oregon
2015 All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art
2014 Speaking in Tongues, CCA, Glasgow
2013 Play! Re-capturing the Radical Imagination, Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art 7
2011 Coming Ashore, Berardo Collection Museum/P-28 Container Project, Lisbon
The Impossible Community, Moscow Museum of Modern Art
8+8 Contemporary International Video Art, 53 Art Museum, Quangzhou
2010 Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic, Tate Liverpool
Walls Are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
Griot Girlz: Feminist Art and the Black Atlantic, Kunstlerhaus Büchenhausen, Innsbruck
¡Afuera! Art in Public Spaces, Centro Cultural España/Cordoba, Argentina
2009 Praxis: Art in Times of Uncertainty, Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art 2
2008 Menschen und Orte, Kunstverein Konstanz, Konstanz
2005 Sharjah International Biennial: 7, London in 6 Easy Steps, ICA, London
2001 Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, London
2000 Video Positive: the Other Side of Zero, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool
New Woman Narratives, World-Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam