Sonia Boyce OBE RA is an Afro-Caribbean British artist and teacher. Born in Islington, London in 1962, she drew so frequently throughout her young education that her teacher recommended Boyce continue with art school. She studied art in a foundation course from age 17 at East Ham College of Art and Technology and later completed her Bachelor’s at Stourbridge College.

Though she studied drawing, Boyce was interested in mixed media and felt out of place in her traditional arts degree program. She continued to feel this way until in 1982, when she attended the first national conference of Black artists. Boyce began to take part in a greater movement of Black British cultural “renaissance”; a direct reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s conservatism that was changing the country, notoriously cutting social programs.

Sonia Boyce’s early works featured drawings as well as collages of texts, magazine clippings, and photography. In the 1990s, Boyce stopped drawing and began to explore photography and performance. Her work is highly political and often reframes English narratives of Black bodies, challenging histories where people of color have been left out.

Much of Boyce’s work explores her own personal Black identity, drawing stories from her family history alongside greater historical narratives such as the Windrush generation. Her portfolio contains many feminine portraits and explorations of her own emotions. Throughout her career, Boyce has worked collaboratively with numerous Black British artists, including John Akomfrah, Zak Ové, and Lubaina Himid. The sense of friendship, closeness, and collaboration is often underlined in these works, where she uses art to explore social practice.

Her works were quickly noticed and exhibited in the span of her career, for example at the age of 21, her works were shown in the Five Black Women exhibition at the Africa Centre in London. At only 23, her works were chosen for The Thin Black Line show at the ICA in London and at age 25, in 1987, Tate purchased her work Missionary Position II, making her the first Black British woman in their collection. Soon, Boyce assumed a constant position as “the first Black woman to...” in the art world. She has tried to break from this and to be understood beyond her identity, while still exploring the political implications and the history that created this very identity.

Sonia Boyce is now a professor of Black Art and Design at the University of the Arts, London. Boyce continues to create art, still focused on political and racial themes. Her first retrospective was held in 2019 at the Manchester Art Gallery. This featured a true overview of her works, including everything from performances to drawings.

The fact that Sonia Boyce is the first Black woman achieving these milestones so late in history (including being the first Black woman chosen representative of Great Britain for the 2022 Venice Biennale) represents precisely the politics that she addresses in her oeuvre. She makes points about both race and gender in the UK art world as well as globally, while experiencing and practicing the very intersections and interactions of these politics in her day-to-day life.