Feeling Her Way by Sonia Boyce: British Pavilion, 59th Biennale di Venezia

The British Council presents Feeling Her Way by Sonia Boyce at the British Pavilion for the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, running from 23 April – 27 November 2022.

British artist Sonia Boyce’s powerful exhibition explores the potential of collaborative play as a route to innovation. Boyce’s installation brings together video works featuring five Black* female musicians (Poppy Ajudha, Jacqui Dankworth MBE, Sofia Jernberg, Tanita Tikaram and composer Errollyn Wallen CBE) who were invited to improvise, interact and play with their voices.   

The video works take centre stage among Boyce’s signature tessellating wallpapers and golden geometric structures, and the Pavilion’s rooms are filled with sounds – sometimes harmonious, sometimes clashing – embodying feelings of freedom, power and vulnerability. 

This new commission expands on Boyce’s Devotional Collection, 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. 

Explore the exhibition online and meet the artist and curator in the films above and below.

The exhibition is curated by Emma Ridgway, who was appointed as the inaugural Shane Akeroyd Associate Curator of the British Pavilion in 2020. Ridgway is Chief Curator at Modern Art Oxford, and has previously worked at Barbican Centre, the Royal Society of Arts, Serpentine Gallery and Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi.

*Sonia Boyce adopts an historically British understanding of the umbrella term Black that gained considerable traction during the 1980s as a collective voice amongst African, South Asian, and Caribbean diasporic cultural and political activists. For Boyce, it is a term that recognises the ongoing impact of Britain’s imperial and colonial past through common experiences of racialisation and discrimination.
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