Sonia Boyce: Demonstrate

Demonstrate is an ambitious installation that recognizes the importance of the "voice" as a vehicle for freedom, collaboration, and radical imagination. Emblematic of Boyce's practice, the exhibition emerges from film and photographic documentation generated over two days of gatherings and events at the Queens Museum. Working directly with local organizations, these film shoots brought together New Yorkers, artists, educators, and the Resistance Revival Chorus to explore how artistic expression can mobilize communities.

Drawing from the creative abundance of community groups that regularly congregate at the Museum, Boyce invited participants to make, sing, speak, or move in order to open up new possibilities for play and social exchange. Documentation of these encounters has been transformed into videos, kaleidoscopic wallpaper prints, and photographs that are presented in an immersive and layered environment. The exhibition juxtaposes a range of improvised and self-narrated experiences that direct our attention to moments of celebration, commemoration, testimony, and ritual. By collaging together a diversity of perspectives, Boyce proposes a closer look at the many ways we can "make our own worlds."

Many cultural activities are featured in the exhibition from artmaking and movement workshops, to the installation and opening ceremony of the Día de Muertos community ofrenda. They are accompanied by individual performances and reflections from workshop participants and collaborating artists. Boyce's second day of shooting culminated in a procession led by the Resistance Revival Chorus around the Museum and into the Panorama of the City of New York. Their call and response chants reverberate across the Museum's galleries as a gesture of joy and perseverance, deeply attuned to how individuals can come together to demand change and reclaim power in times of uncertainty. For Boyce, the collective voice in song offers not only a sense of vitality and belonging, but also a demonstration of love.

Sonia Boyce: Demonstrate is organized by Lindsey Berfond, Assistant Curator and Studio Program Manager with Isa López, Administrative Assistant – Curatorial.

About the Artist

Sonia Boyce (DBE, RA) is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, drawing, photography, print, sound, and installation. In 2022, she presented FEELING HER WAY, a major commission for the British Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia for which she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Boyce came to prominence in the early 1980s as a key figure in the burgeoning Black British Arts Movement with figurative pastel drawings and photocollages that addressed issues of race and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, however, Boyce has shifted significantly to embrace a wider social practice that invites improvisation, collaboration, movement, and sound with other people. In 2016, Boyce was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London and in 2023, she was elected as an Honorary Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Science in Boston. In 2014, she became a Professor at University of the Arts London, where she holds the inaugural Chair in Black Art & Design. In the 2024 King's New Year Honour's List, Boyce was awarded a Damehood. Her works are held in many UK and international museum collections including TATE, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Arts Council Collection of England, London; British Council, London; Government Art Collection, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), Paris; and Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Barbados.