Oct 3, 2024

Feeling Her Way with Sonia Boyce

The acclaimed British artist continues her Canadian solo debut tour at the AGO

Sonia Boyce, 2024. Photo: Craig Boyko / AGO.

On view now at the AGO, acclaimed British interdisciplinary artist Sonia Boyce, DBE RA, continues her Canadian debut tour with Feeling Her Way. This captivating installation combines video, collage, music and sculpture. Boyce received the prestigious Golden Lion prize at the 2022 Venice Biennale, where the work was first commissioned

Presented at the AGO in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art 2024 for its second North American stop, Feeling Her Way centers the vocal performances of four Black female musicians: Jacqui Dankworth, Poppy Ajudha, Sofia Jernberg, Tanita Tikaram in a thought-provoking visual and auditory experience. Brought together by Boyce at Abbey Road Studios in London and Atlantis Studios in Stockholm, the vocalists were guided by composer Errollyn Wallen through improvisation, imagination, and exploration. The audience will encounter colour-tinted videos that take centre stage among immersive and tessellating wallpapers created by Boyce, as well as 3D reflective geometric structures and a rich display of music memorabilia from the artist’s ongoing collection, documenting the transnational contributions made by Black British female musicians.

Recently, to mark the installation’s opening, Boyce and Toronto Biennial of Art curator Dominique Fontaine appeared live in Walker Court for a conversation about the artist’s work. The two discussed Feeling Her Way in-depth, sharing reflections about Boyce’s process, inspiration and what she hopes visitors take away from the unique experience.

Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way, 2022. Commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion for the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2022. © Sonia Boyce (CARCC Ottawa 2024). Installation view, Leeds Art Gallery, 2023. Photo: Rob Battersby.

Fontaine: Could you elaborate on the genesis of Feeling Her Way, your monumental immersive installation that invites us into a sumptuous visual and sonic polyphony?

Boyce: I'd been working on a long-standing project called The Devotional Series that tries to capture a historical arc of British-based Black women in the music industry. When it started off, I was just thinking about singers, and now it has broadened out to those who work in the music industry. During the lockdown, I was invited to make a work for the British Pavilion in Venice. I thought it would be quite difficult to make something new when all my work relies on working with people, so I decided I would return to The Devotional Series. It had been growing as people were sending me names of artists that I should think about including in this archive – or collection. And I thought, I've got lots of memorabilia, and lots of names, but I really want to work directly with performers.

So, I reached out to the performers that you'll see in Feeling Her Way - who I didn’t know at all - and they agreed to be involved without knowing what it was going to be about. When they asked me what I wanted them to do specifically, I told them all to sing together in whatever fashion feels comfortable. They were very nervous because - like most people who work in the music industry - they are accustomed to rehearsing repeatedly until they get something right. When you step into the first phase of the installation, you'll see a four-screen piece featuring all four performers. This footage was taken during a morning session we had at Abbey Road studios, where we brought in the composer Errollyn Wallen to guide the singers through some exercises to get them to loosen up and find a way to sing together. The film is the first 20 minutes that they'd all just met. What you are seeing is them getting to know each other through singing together without knowing each other or each other's style. This question of people meeting for the first time, and how they might negotiate being together and doing something together - particularly playing together - is something I find very interesting.

How does improvisation play a role in your creative process, and how is it manifested in Feeling Her Way?

When I was at art school in the late 70s and early 80s, most of my tutors were conceptual artists who believed that once you have an idea, you then follow it through in the work that you make. I was always being told off by my tutors for what they would call being post intentional; I would just do something, and then I'd work out what it was after I did it, which was against the grain of the formalist way I'd been taught. Although they thought this was a bad way to work, it seemed to be my own way to figure things out. It's important for people to know that, though I do set up scenarios, I'm never sure what's going to take place. But always, something euphoric happens when you just put people in a room and there's a chance to just try things out. It's always very awkward at first, but then things start to fall into place.

For people going into the exhibition [Feeling Her Way], it may seem very confusing at first, because there’s a lot thrown at them as they come in. I've tried to shift some of the rules about encountering exhibitions. It's not trying to explain itself as an exhibition. I'm hoping that people will trust that it's worth being in there. Of course, I think it's stunning what the musicians have given to the project, but it's not an easy experience to just go in and think, “oh, I get it.” and leave. It demands some time, so there's a little bit of improvisation in terms of the visitor experience as well.

Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way, 2022. Commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion for the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2022. © Sonia Boyce (CARCC Ottawa 2024). Installation view, Turner Contemporary, 2023. Photo: Reece Straw

Wallpaper is a signature element in much of your work and can be traced back to your early drawings. In this installation, exuberantly colored geometric patterned wallpapers adorned each wall. What do they signify?

I'm not sure I can say what they signify. It's always difficult for me to say what I think the work means, because I'm more interested in how other people are responding to it. However, yes, I have always been interested in wallpaper. When I was a child, my parents' home was highly decorated - lots of different patterns on different surfaces - and I always used to think that somehow the wallpaper was moving, that it was doing something other than what it was doing, that it had this other kind of life. It's always something that keeps coming through in my practice – I love the world that you go into when you go into a highly patterned space. The images that populate the wallpaper are all stills that were taken during the day of filming the performance: details of Abbey Road studios and of the performers. I wanted to explore the idea of documenting a performance, and then taking those images on the journey. For me, wallpaper is really great at telling stories and holding a space. And, structurally, that's what's going on there, the patterns are there to call a particular dynamic within the room.

What are your hopes for how audiences will engage with and interpret Feeling Her Way? How do you want people to feel?

The thing that I want is for people to listen. I think listening is not easy, and it's definitely not easy in this space. Listening takes a certain kind of commitment. I'm hoping that if people do take up that challenge to sit with the sounds, with the atmosphere of the work, that all sorts of other things start to be heard. In the last room, there is a lot of memorabilia that is attached to The Devotional Collection. Part of having a social practice is that I'm always thinking about how to bring people in. I'm always hoping that somehow people will start to see themselves when they're not expecting to see themselves. The reflective surfaces, the memorabilia and the sounds of these singers hopefully affect people, not in a conceptual way, but literally in their bodies.

Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way is on view now on Level 1 of the AGO in the Edmond G. Odette Family and Robert & Cheryl McEwen Galleries (galleries 128 and 129). This installation is presented at the AGO in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art 2024. The Biennial is on now until December 1, 2024, at 11 venues across Toronto – for more information, visit torontobiennial.org or @torontobiennial.

The Canadian presentation of Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way is initiated and organized by the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art. 