Artist: Boyce, Sonia

Sonia Boyce began her career as a painter and focused in her early work on the idea of black identity and belonging. In the 1990s she moved to a more generic exploration of personal relationships, using the context of ‘interactive’ sites of personal drama, such as phone booths, lonely hearts columns and the domestic interior, to create objects and installations. Boyce has worked with music, film and video, inviting members of the public—in the form of choirs, gallery visitors and refugee communities for example—to work collaboratively with her, blurring distinctons between art and education. Such work has included interviewing women about their memories of black female singers. Drawing has always been an important form of expression for Boyce, and is often brought together with her interest in music in frank and moving pieces about the twin powers of voice and line