Opening September 19, 2024
Recipient of the prestigious Golden Lion prize at the 2022 Venice Biennale, acclaimed British artist Sonia Boyce makes her Canadian debut with an installation combining video, collage, music and sculpture.
Feeling Her Way centers the vocal performances of four Black female musicians: Jacqui Dankworth, Poppy Ajudha, Sofia Jernberg, Tanita Tikaram in a playful and thought-provoking visual and auditory experience. Brought together by Boyce at Abbey Road Studios in London and Atlantis Studios in Stockholm, the vocalists were guided by composer Errollyn Wallen through improvisation, imagination, and exploration.
The audience will encounter colour-tinted videos that take centre stage among immersive and tessellating wallpapers, created by Boyce, as well as golden 3D geometric structures and a reflective display of music memorabilia.
Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way is presented at the AGO in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art 2024. The Canadian presentation of Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way is initiated and organized by the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Sonia Boyce OBE RA (London, UK) emerged in the 1980s as a key figure in the Black British Art Movement. Her recent art practice is primarily concerned with the production and reception of unexpected performative gestures, with an underlying interest in how the personal, the aesthetic, and the political intersect. In 2019, the artist received an OBE for services to art in the Queen’s New Year Honours List, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art. In 2016, Boyce was elected a Royal Academician, and received a Paul Hamlyn Artist Award. Between 2012 – 2017, Boyce was Professor of Fine Art at Middlesex University and since 2014 she has been a Professor at University of the Arts London, where she holds the inaugural Chair in Black Art & Design. A three year research project into Black Artists and Modernism culminated with the 2018 BBC Four documentary Whoever Heard of a Black Artist?, exploring the contribution of overlooked artists of African and Asian descent to the story of Modern British art.