Sonia Boyce works in a variety of mediums including drawing, print, photographic collage and performance, exploring issues of race and gender in the media and everyday life. She often collaborates with other artists and increasingly seeks to involve the audience in her performance work, exploring the idea of art as social practice, and generating debate.

In this three-part photographic piece, Boyce explores the overlap between different cultures through traditional folk characters from two annual carnivals: Cropover in Barbados and FreiPlatz in Germany. Boyce describes these characters as ‘tricksters who sit at the crossroads between the underworld and the real world’. The largest piece uses stills from a video work (filmed in part at the house in Leeds of the Harewood family, known to have made their fortunes through slavery) where performers dressed up as the vibrant Barbadian folk character ‘Shaggy Bear’. The corresponding horizontal work uses imagery of a similar figure from the medieval German festival of FreiPlatz. By abstracting and repeating elements of the original images, Boyce creates a new visual language which is hypnotic and arresting. The third image – a photographic still from the final day of the Cropover carnival in Barbados – is juxtaposed alongside, creating a complex, layered work drawn from multiple references.

Boyce has exhibited her work internationally and was recently selected by the British Council as the first black woman to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2021. She is represented in the permanent collections of Arts Council England and Tate Modern, London and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to the arts. She has also taught in many art colleges across the UK during the past 30 years.

She lives and works in London.