Hauser & Wirth is honoured to announce representation of artist Sonia Boyce, in collaboration with Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy.
Over the course of four decades, Sonia Boyce OBE RA has developed a powerfully original practice that transcends boundaries as an interdisciplinary artist and academic working across film, photography, print, sound and installation. Boyce creates immersive and experiential spaces that explore themes of play, disruption and revelation in which the audience become active participants.
In 2022, Boyce presented ‘Feeling Her Way’, commissioned for the British Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia for which she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. The exhibition is currently on view at Leeds Art Gallery, UK, as part of a continuing international tour. In a collaboration with five Black female musicians, the project features sounds – sometimes harmonious, sometimes clashing – that embody feelings of freedom, power and vulnerability among Boyce’s video works, signature tessellating wallpapers and golden geometric structures. The work expands on Boyce’s ‘Devotional Collection’, an archive built over more than two decades and spanning more than three centuries, which honours the substantial contribution of Black British female musicians to transnational culture.
Boyce first 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. In the early 1990s, Boyce made a shift towards a conceptual practice which led to significant multi- media and improvisational works, distinctly focused on collaboration, movement and sound. Working across a range of media, Boyce’s practice today is focused on questions of artistic authorship and cultural difference. She continues to break new ground through her commitment to questioning the production and reception of unexpected gestures, with an underlying interest in the intersection of personal and political subjectivities.
Manuela Wirth, President, Hauser & Wirth said, ‘It is such a great honour that Sonia Boyce has joined our gallery. A remarkable pioneer, Sonia’s highly original practice combines not only conceptual rigour and joyful creativity, but also generosity to the audience who become active participants, along with her fellow collaborators. In this way, Sonia has created a vocabulary wholly her own – consistently finding new approaches to making art that embrace experimentation with humanity and social practice at its core. At Hauser & Wirth we believe that art is a transformative force and our own global learning programs are a reflection of this ethos. We look forward to collaborating with Sonia in the years ahead.’
Boyce’s first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth will be held in 2025.
photo: Parisa Taghizadeh
