Sonia Boyce (DBE RA) has long championed the voices of Black women. In 1999, the acclaimed British artist began her Devotional Collection (1999 - ongoing), an archive that pays homage to the contributions of Black British women musicians. Since its conception, Boyce has encouraged visitors to add to this ever-growing collection of names and memorabilia.  

Inspired by the Devotional Collection, Boyce wanted to create a work featuring performers from the collection, which led her to conceive Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way. Currently on view at the AGO and presented in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art, Feeling Her Way is a layered, polyphonic installation built from the vocalizations of four Black women musicians: Jacqui Dankworth, Poppy Ajudha, Sofia Jernberg, and Tanita Tikaram. 

The central video of the installation features composer and Master of the King’s Music Errollyn Wallen guiding four singers through improvisation, imagination and exploration. As you move further into the installation, each singer performs individually. The vocalizations from these various performances combine to create a playful and thought-provoking experience made only more immersive by the tessellating wallpaper and gold geometric sculptures. The last room of the installation also features a selection of memorabilia from Boyce’s Devotional Collection and a QR code that visitors can scan to contribute to a Canadian version of the Devotional Collection.  

As you enter Feeling Her Way and become engulfed in this immersive installation, learn more about each vocalist contributing to this layered auditory experience.  

Jacqui Dankworth 

If you’re not already familiar with Jacqui Dankworth – one of the UK’s most highly regarded vocalists – you may be familiar with her parents. Hailing from a musical powerhouse of a family, Dankworth’s mother is Cleo Laine, one of the world’s leading jazz singers, and her father is the late John Dankworth, a celebrated jazz composer and musician.  

Dankworth’s style fuses jazz with folk and R&B, creating a unique musical palette. As you listen to Dankworth sing in Feeling Her Way, you may notice her crisp enunciation, accurate pitch, and lyrical interpretation, all skills she likely expanded upon from her former career as an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

Alongside improvising in the central video of Feeling Her Way, she performs her song “Reach Out” (2022), which was inspired by a conversation with her mother. When she asked Laine, who is now in her 90s, what keeps her energized, she replied, “You’ve got to imagine there’s this light … It’s always there and you’ve got to reach towards it.” 

For her final piece in the installation, Dankworth mimics a chiming bell by singing a single note. This video is presented alongside Sofia Jernberg’s vocalizations, creating a duet between the two vocalists.  

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

Sofia Jernberg 

Sofia Jernberg is a Swedish experimental singer and composer, acclaimed for her work in jazz, classical music, and sound art. Her style incorporates animalistic sounds, folk singing, and throat singing, representing the places she has inhabited: northern Europe, Vietnam, and Ethiopia.  

As you enter Feeling Her Way, Jernberg’s ululating voice can be picked out of the blanket of vocalizations. She has extraordinary range and pitch, yet disrupts this, using her body like a musical instrument to create abstract noises. In her performance for Feeling Her Way, Jernberg improvises abstract vocalizations. On the screen beside Jernberg, Dankworth joins mimicking a chiming church bell. Put into a duet for the installation, Jernberg and Dankworth are united in emulating abstract and non-human sounds. 

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

Tanita Tikaram  

For Tanita Tikaram, partaking in Feeling Her Way was a liberating experience. The German-born British pop/folk singer-songwriter has had an established career with her songs “Twist in My Sobriety” and “Good Tradition” making the charts. Feeling Her Way gave Tikaram a new first in her career: her first time improvising vocally.  

On top of participating in the central video, Tikaram performs Instant Singer-Songwriter (2022), which is a series of original song segments improvised by Tikaram on a Steinway piano in Abbey Road Studio. Finding an innovative flow, visitors can witness Tikaram amid an extraordinary freeform composing session.  

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

Poppy Ajudha  

Poppy Ajudha has become known in the UK through the underground jazz scene in South East London. Ajudha is largely a self-taught singer, and her music critically examines politics, gender, and race. Her musical style incorporates aspects of jazz, soul, and R&B. 

In addition to improvising in the central video of Feeling Her Way, Ajudha sings an unaccompanied version of her song “Demons” (2022). The lyrics of this song call out the inherent vulnerability in us all. If you listen carefully, you may notice that Ajudha has a distinct way of fading the beginning and ending of her words. Like Tikaram, Feeling Her Way created a new experience for Ajudha as an artist. In Ajudha’s case, she sang unaccompanied for the first time, an experience that allowed her to focus on the emotional expression of the song like never before.  

Immerse yourself in these performers’ playful and thought-provoking vocalizations by visiting Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way, on view at the AGO on Level 1 in the Edmond G. Odette Family and Robert & Cheryl McEwen Galleries (galleries 128 and 129) until April 6, 2025. This installation is presented at the AGO in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art 2024. 

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

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