The Artists Roundtable, an international forum for leading practitioners, is hosted by Tamsin Dillon, faculty member of the MA Curatorial program.

Dame Sonia Boyce OBE RA (b. 1962, London, UK) is an interdisciplinary artist and academic working across film, drawing, photography, print, sound and installation. In 2022, she presented ‘Feeling Her Way’ for the British Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in Italy, 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 British Black Arts Movement with figurative pastel drawings and photo collages that addressed issues of race and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, Boyce has shifted significantly to embrace a social practice that invites improvisation, collaboration, movement, and sound with other people. Working across a range of media, Boyce’s practice today is focused on questions of artistic authorship and cultural difference.

Boyce's work often involves inviting audiences and collaborators to participate in creating immersive, experimental art. Key aspects of her practice include: Art as social practice, Collaborative improvisation, Multi-sensory environments, Boyce explores how art functions within society, generating critical debates about cultural identity and difference.: Since the 1990s, her work has centered on collaboration, with participants responding to environments through unplanned actions like movement, speaking, and singing. Key to her practice is her consistent focus on Black artists and history: as a researcher and academic, Boyce has focused on unearthing and amplifying the contributions of Black and Asian artists who have been overlooked in the story of modern British art. Her Devotional Collection, an ongoing archive project, documents the history of Black British female musicians.

Selected major exhibitions include: Feeling Her Way (2022): Boyce's critically acclaimed Golden Lion-winning installation at the British Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale, which celebrated Black British female musicians. In the Castle of My Skin (2020–2021): A traveling exhibition beginning at Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK, which showcased the depth of her multi-decade career, Devotional (2007): A solo exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery that featured her archival project celebrating Black British female singers, Sonia Boyce: recent work (1988): A solo show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, exhibiting some of her earlier, more figurative works. Boyce's work is featured in numerous prestigious collections, including: Tate, London, Arts Council Collection, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

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