Sonia Boyce at the British Pavilion in Venice 2022
(Picture: Cristiano Corte)It’s not often I get to lubricate an interview with a martini, but Sonia Boyce, who today reveals her solo exhibition as the artist representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, has stipulated that we meet in her favourite place in Venice, the lavishly decorated Oriental bar of the Hotel Metropole which looks out across the water. It seems rude not to. Boyce arrives just after me, and eyes my still-frosty glass. Is she a gin or a vodka person? I ask. “I’m just drinking at this point,” she jokes as she sits down.
Fair enough - it’s a daunting moment. We meet the night before the Londoner’s new piece, which fills the imposing British Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, opens. Feeling Her Way is a ten-film installation celebrating the “collaborative dynamism” of five black female musicians, four British - Poppy Ajudha, Jacqui Dankworth MBE, Tanita Tikaram and the composer Errollyn Wallen CBE - and one Swedish, Sofia Jernberg. It’s an extension of Boyce’s ongoing project Devotional Collection, built over 20+ years and spanning more than three centuries, which honours the often overlooked contribution of black British female musicians “to the emotional lives of the public and to transnational culture”.
