Artist’s Talk: Sonia Boyce

ICA exhibiting artist Sonia Boyce is in conversation with art historian Sophie Orlando discussing her work on the occasion of the exhibition Sonia Boyce: We move in her way. A new body of work created especially for the ICA, We move in her way involves the exploratory vocal and movement performances of Elaine Mitchener, Barbara Gamper and her dancers Eve Stainton, Ria Uttridge and Be van Vark, with an invited audience. The title of the work suggests two possible readings: that ‘she’ dictates our movements, or that we obstruct ‘hers’, with both interpretations suggesting power is at play. Here, Boyce and Orlando discuss the artist’s participatory practice and this new work in which Boyce has invited others to engage performatively with improvisation.

Sophie Orlando is an Art historian, researcher, and Professor of Art History (contextual studies) at the National Art School La Villa Arson, in Nice, France.

Sonia Boyce (b. 1962) is a British born artist who lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art at East Ham College and Stourbridge College of Art & Design (1979-1983). At the heart of Boyce’s work are questions about the production and reception of unexpected gestures, with an underlying interest in the intersection of personal and political subjectivities. Since the 1990s she has been working with the improvised actions of others to create multi-media artworks. Boyce is Professor of Fine Art at Middlesex University, Chair of Black Art and Design at the University of the Arts London and is the Principal Investigator for a 3-year AHRC-funded project ‘Black Artists and Modernism’. In 2016, she was elected a Royal Academician. Recent exhibitions include: Afuera! Art in Public Spaces, Centro Cultural España Cordoba, Argentina (2010); The Impossible Community, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2011); 8+8 Contemporary International Video Art, 53 Art Museum, Quangzhou (2011); Play! Recapturing the Radical Imagination, Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art 7 (2013); Sonia Boyce: Scat – Sound and Collaboration, Rivington Place, London (2013); Speaking in Tongues, CCA-Glasgow (2014); S/N: Signal to Noise, Whitney Museum of Modern Art/The Kitchen, New York (2015); Liberties – 40 Years Since the Sex Discrimination Act, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (2015); All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); and Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre (Dada Nice), Villa Arson, Nice (2016).