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Safe as Houses

Photograph commissioned by Aidan Moesby for the online exhibition Thresholds at MIMA

Artist Statement 

Sonia Boue has a performative and responsive visual arts practice.

Situated between her studio, and online spaces, Boué’s practice encompasses many forms to articulate a concern with home and the domestic as metaphors for exile and displacement. This touches both on the historic and the contemporary, and is often autobiographical. She is also at the forefront of neuro-inclusive participatory arts practice in the UK.

Expansive and eclectic research enables her to create layered responses in paint, film, photography, assemblage, installation and performance; the boundaries between these forms becomes elastic to arrive at hybrid creations, hinting at an embodied duality. Intuitive and process-driven, her work often contains a spirit of improvisation and experimentalism. She approaches the interfaces of analogue and digital with a Heath Robinson vigour.

At the intersection of the visual arts and activism, Sonia generates liminal encounters to arrive at both instantaneous and more considered works. Dialogue is activated by sharing visual output across fora, serving as a catalyst for socially-engaged conversations from which to create further responses, rituals, and invocations to creative resistance through making.

Boué is concerned with objects, identity and location. Rooted in a fascination with family archives, material memory, and the themes of forced migration and inherited trauma, her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in digital form at Tate Britain, the BBC, and Bodleian Library in Oxford. She has performed in the UK, Ireland, and Spain. She has a significant body of postmemory work.

Sonia creates and leads Arts Council England funded projects which pioneer inclusive models of practice. She participates in a variety of community arts projects and carries out visual research in academic contexts. 


Sonia is a Board member for a-n The Artists Information Company and Artist Member for CVAN SE.

Biography

Toddler Sonia wearing white dress & straw hat talking to a black dog in Puebla, Mexico.
Photo of seven year old Sonia with long hair & fringe, sticking her tongue out.

Her earliest experimental performance was in Mexico at the age of two when she let go of a beautiful red helium balloon to see what would happen, having been told not to let go. Devastated, she recovered her composure by swallowing a burst balloon and two pesos. She also enjoyed talking to dogs.

At seven she released the pegs on her pyjamas which were hanging out to dry on her grandmother's balcony in Barcelona. Sailing down 5 floors onto the roof of a passing taxi she watched them disappear into the night. This was arguably a creative pinnacle.

They called Sonia The Earthquake.

Colour photo of Sonia with short grey hair covering her face with photo of Sonia as a child

Sonia is currently working backwards to unlearn everything that has separated her from the

girl she once was.

Publicly Funded Projects 

 

2021 Arts Council England funded R&D Neurophototherapy project

 

2020 Arts Council England funded  Flow Observatorium Kongress Commission

 

2020 Covid Commission Disability Arts Online

 

2020 Thresholds Online Exhibition at MIMA

 

2020 Arts Council England Covid-19 emergency funding 

 

2020   Arts Council England funded collaboration with Richard Hunt for the Shadowlight Artist’s LUMINOUS project
 

2018-2019   Arts Council England funded, Neither Use Nor Ornament (NUNO)

 

2018   AHRC funded Playing A/Part 3 year art film commission

2018 Arts Council England funded collaboration with Richard Hunt for the Shadowlight Artist’s Rising project.

 

2018   HUSH, solo pop-up installation at Barcelona University

 

2018  BBC Radio 4 programme The Art of Now: Return to Catalonia, with Overtone Productions

 

2018   Artist/ mentor,  Arts at the Old Fire Station and Crisis Skylight, Our Place Project 

 

2018  Solo exhibition at Arts at the Old Fire Station in Oxford, ¡Buenos Días Dictador!

 

2018  Arturo Barea Archive film commission with IC Communication, Instituto Cervantes and Bodleian Library.

 

2017   Arts Council England funded, Museum for Object Research

 

2017   A-N Professional Development Bursary

2016   Arts Council England funded Through An Artist's Eye project.

2016 Arts Council England funded collaboration with Richard Hunt for the Shadowlight Artist’s Creative Bridges project.

 

2015   Tate Britain film collaboration about the life of British artist Felicia Browne.

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