Sonia Boyce’s exhibition ‘Feeling Her Way,’ which won the Golden Lion award for Best National Participation, is currently on display at Leeds Art Gallery. Originally commissioned by the British Council in 2022 for the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice – La Biennale di Venezia – the exhibition is an invigorating, brilliantly overwhelming piece of immersive art.
The title of the exhibition perfectly reflects the uncontainable nature of the show and how it surges and steers in multiple directions, in an ever evolving, mercurial space. Boyce summoned the talent of four different singers: Jacqui Dankworth, Sofia Jernberg, Poppy Ajudha and Tanita Tikaram, as well as musical director Errollyn Wallen, to create a truly transforming and vivid experience.
The exhibition gives you no time for singular observation as it throws you straight into its immersive atmosphere. On entering the exhibition, visitors are lured and intrigued by the strange, merging sounds from the main room. We are confronted with a collage of CDs and vinyls from the artists’ careers on a wall of curious golden cave-like rock. These are part of an ongoing project by Boyce which began in 1999, ‘The Devotional Collection,’ which celebrates the cultural contribution of Black British female musicians on an international scale.
This, combined with the mysterious chants, compels entry into the cave that beckons from around the corner…..
The next room calls for a subversive and exhilarating fortress of examination. Golden, glacier-like seats are laid out in the centre, an invitation to sit with the beautiful cacophony of wailing, whispering and talking. Screens are laid out at one side, showing each performer in their own separate space. Conducted by Errollyn Wallen, performers express themselves in a unique way through a mixture of words, notes, noises and reactions; forming a hive of fluctuating sound that seems to send you into a kind of hypnotic trance, yet where your senses are heightened and tuned into the patterns and ideas that are being cast around. When first visiting this exhibition, it feels impossible to sit down. I found myself stepping back and forth and side to side, completely mesmerised and engrossed in the space.
As each singer is exploring their imagination and putting aside their inhibitions, they are contributing a different energy to the possessive and liberating mood. The walls are papered with photo collages of the performances, and this somehow seems to make the experience more encompassing.
Whilst the separate singers adjoin to create one unanimous force, there is also a strong sense of letting go through the music that is created. As well as experimenting together and playing off each other, the performers are also prompted to perform a solo piece, interspersed at different points within the experience, changing the dynamic swell of the almost physical euphony. Each performer is either singing excerpts of songs or being prompted to improvise their own noises, the whole scope of the sound shifting in turbulence, forever changing its shape as you become more akin to the environment, like being swept away to another world of perception.
Some of the words and utterances are easy to make out, for example, phrases like “I am queen” are accumulated as a staggered chant.
Merging into this outpouring surge are slower, deeper noises from the far room, adding a kind of curious drone to the focality of this web of sound. In this end room, a duet between singers Jacqui Danqworth and Sofia Jernberg. Dankworth delivers a deep, emotive, touching lullaby, her long, haunting notes, resonating with introspection and melancholy – I found myself transfixed at one moment, overtaken by the intensity of Dankworth’s performance. This is broken up by Jernberg’s high energy tonal whistling that seems to vent a kind of frustration. The effect of the two performances together creates a kind of fragmented frenzy, circling between feelings of suffering, vitriol and purity. There are many instances of this kind of juxtaposition within the exhibition, where fast eruptions overlap with slow brooding cascades, and joltiness and uncertainty align with resolute flittering – a perfect example of a switch to this contrast being Tanita Tikaram’s impassioned, forthright solo piece on the piano that really cuts through the swirling dynamics of the environment.
I highly recommend a visit to experience this eye-opening exhibition to those who haven’t already….. ‘Feeling Her Way’ is an exhibition that has no singular shape or place, inspiring important thoughts and feelings about ourselves on our journey to freedom and self-expression. This was an almost eternal experience that requires constant revisiting…..
Feeling Her Way is at Leeds Art Gallery until the 5th November.
The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AA
Supported by British Council Art Fund and Henry Moore Foundation.
Photography: Rob Battersby.
