Turner Contemporary, Margate
4 February – 8 May 2023

Now on show at Turner Contemporary, Sonia Boyce’s immersive multimedia installation, which won the Golden Lion for best national participation at the 59th Venice Biennale, celebrates black female musicians and invites visitors on a journey of self-discovery, with the ultimate goal being freedom.

“There’s a part of me that enjoys making noise,” says Sonia Boyce (b1962, London), and, certainly, on entering the first room of the artist’s five-room “immersive installation”, Feeling Her Way, at Turner Contemporary, noise is what greets me. Noise and colour, both in riotous form. But once my eyes and ears begin to acclimatise, I start to pick out the nuances, the different strains of sound and colour, the individual voices and motifs. The exhibition’s curator, Emma Ridgway, from the British Council, describes it as “an expanded collage, a layering of tessellating wallpapers of clashing colours, golden geometric structures replicating pyrite, and monochrome moving-image works, which immerse the space in the emotive sound of women singing.”¹ This is the first iteration in the exhibition’s tour – further venues include Leeds Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art – following its winning the Golden Lion for best national participation, in the British Pavilion, at the 59th Venice Biennale last year. Throughout my visit, there is a steady footfall of all ages.

Boyce, an artist and academic known for her collaborative social practice, incorporating photography, video and multimedia installation, describes her role in the project as “an editor” of material made by others. She conceived the idea of Feeling Her Way as bringing together five black female musicians “to improvise, interact and play with their voices”, asking: “What does it mean to feel free?” Poppy Ajudha (b1995, UK), Tanita Tikaram (b1969, Germany), Jacqui Dankworth (b1963, UK) and Sofia Jernberg (b1983, Ethiopia) come together with the award-winning vocal composer Errollyn Wallen (b1958, Belize), whom Boyce has tasked with leading the women to this end, in Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios, London – made famous by the 1969 Beatles album named after them.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.