Third Text

Gilane Tawadros

The work of Sonia Boyce occupies a special place within the history of British art, encouraging and challenging us to ask what it means to be a black woman artist in a hierarchical art world, and to confront the difficult and vexing questions surrounding interracial relations in a cosmopolitan society where cultural identities still condense around myths of nationhood. This monograph traces the artist’s trajectory from her early graphic work and subtly weaves a complex tapestry of the memories, desires and constraints that mark the formative years of a young woman subject to differing cultural values, to the later mixed-media work, which, drawing on familiar elements of British popular culture and cinema, addresses society’s positioning of individuals in terms of race, class and gender. The sensitive and authoritative essay by Gilane Tawadros is accompanied by a parallel commentary selected from the artist’s diary notes, detailing those moments and encounters that she felt to be most significant in the development of her thought and art practice.

Published in 1997
Paperback
96pp with 35 colour and 40 b&w illustrations
ISBN 0 947753 09 5

Sonia Boyce: Speaking in Tongues can be purchased from Central Books