Artist Sonia Boyce wins Golden Lion at Venice Biennale.

 

First black woman to represent the UK.

British artist Sonia Boyce gained the Venice Biennales’ pinnacle Golden Lion prize together along with her paintings Feeling Her Way, which blended video, collage, tune and sculpture. Boyce is the primary black woman to symbolize the UK.

Her artwork features motion pictures of 5 black woman musicians who improvise and play with their voices. “The rooms of the [British] pavilion are packed with sounds – now and again harmonious, now and again clashing – embodying emotions of freedom, strength and vulnerability,” in step with the British Council, which commissioned the paintings.

The biennale’s five-person jury commended Boyce for raising “important questions of rehearsal” as opposed to perfectly tuned music, as well as for creating “relations between voices in the form of a choir in the distance”.