Diverse Engagement discussion, Sonia Boyce

Create and Common Ground: Sonia Boyce

Diverse Engagements and Collaborative Practice

Common Ground and Create are partnering on this discussion event as part of the Create Debates and Common Ground’s CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS. This event will host a wide-ranging discussion exploring culturally diverse participatory art practices. Panel includes UK based artist Sonia Boyce, Vukasin Nedeljkovic of Asylum Archive and Dublin based artist Laragh Pittman who is currently working with a Muslim women’s group in the context of her CITIZEN ARTIST award. Drawing on direct project experience of these artists and collaborators, the discussion will focus on a range of questions on socially engaged art practice in the context of cultural diversity, ethics and representation; politics of engagement and also on the issue of how artists work with integrity, solidarity and real partnership with culturally diverse groups, avoiding the act of ‘Othering’ or ‘Exoticism?’

Sonia Boyce

Sonia Boyce MBE is a British Afro-Caribbean artist who lives and works in London. She studied at Stourbridge College, West Midlands. Boyce’s early work addressed issues of race and gender in the media and in day-to-day life. She expressed these themes through large pastel drawings and photographic collages.

Her work has since shifted materially and conceptually by incorporating a variety of media such as photographs, collages, films, prints, drawings, installation and sound. Her recent work collaboratively brings the audience into sharper focus as an integral part of the artwork, between artist, vocalists and audience, demonstrating how cultural differences might be articulated, mediated and enjoyed. Boyce’s significant exhibitions include Five Black Women, African Centre, London (1983); Sonia Boyce: For you, only you, Magdalen College, Oxford and subsequent UK venues (2007 – 2008); and All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale, Arsenale and Giardini (2015).

Sonia currently  acts as the principal researcher for Black Artists and Modernism (BAM) , a three-year research programme that investigates the artworks of Black-British artists and the works’ relationship to modernism.

Boyce is represented in the permanent collections of Arts Council England and Tate Modern, London. In 2007, Boyce was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to the arts. She is currently Professor of Fine Arts at Middlesex University, London and Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.