24 Facts About Sonia Boyce

Sonia Boyce is a Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.

Sonia Boyce has been closely collaborating with other artists since 1990 with a focus on collaborative work, frequently involving improvisation and unplanned performative actions on the part of her collaborators.

Sonia Boyce's work involves a variety of media, such as drawing, print, photography, video, and sound.

Sonia Boyce's art explores "the relationship between sound and memory, the dynamics of space, and incorporating the spectator".

Sonia Boyce has taught Fine Art studio practice in several art colleges across the UK.

In March 2016, Sonia Boyce was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, becoming the first black female Royal Academician since the academy's founding in 1768.

In February 2020, Sonia Boyce was selected by the British Council to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale 2022, the first black woman to do so.

Sonia Boyce gained prominence as part of the Black British cultural renaissance of the 1980s.

An early exhibition in which Sonia Boyce participated was in 1983 at the Africa Centre, London, entitled Five Black Women.

Sonia Boyce took part in the 1983 exhibition Black Women Time Now.

In 1989, Sonia Boyce was one of four female artists selected for an exhibition called The Other Story, which was the first display of British African, Caribbean, and Asian Modernism.

In 2018, as part of a retrospective exhibition of her art at Manchester Art Gallery, Sonia Boyce was invited by the curators of the gallery to make new work in dialogue with the collection's 18th- and 19th-century galleries, for which Sonia Boyce invited performance artists to engage with these works in these galleries in "a non-binary way".

Sonia Boyce has taught widely and uses workshops as part of her creative process, and her works can be seen in many national collections.

Sonia Boyce led a team in preparing an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery that focused on artists of African and Asian descent who have played a part in shaping the history of British art.

In February 2020 Sonia Boyce was selected as the first Black woman to represent the United Kingdom at the Venice Biennale; chosen by the British Council, she would produce a major solo exhibition.

Sonia Boyce first attended the Biennale in 2015, she was a part of curator Okwui Enwezor's "All the World's Features" exhibition.

Sonia Boyce's piece, Feeling Sonia Boyce's Way, was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2022 exhibition.

Sonia Boyce was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2007 Birthday Honours, Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 New Year Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2024 New Year Honours, all for services to art.

On 9 March 2016, Sonia Boyce was elected as a member of the Royal Academy.

In 2024 Sonia Boyce was elected to the British Academy in London, as an Honorary Fellow.

In February 2023, Sonia Boyce appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

Sonia Boyce graduated later to incorporate photography, graphic design, film, and caricature to convey very political messages within her work.

Sonia Boyce utilizes a variety of mediums within the same work to convey messages revolving around Black representation, perceptions of the black body and pervasive notions that arose from scientific racism.

Sonia Boyce rose as a prominent artist in the 1980s when the Black Cultural Renaissance took place.