Sonia Boyce. Demonstrate

The Queens Museum presents a newly commissioned work by internationally acclaimed artist Sonia Boyce. Demonstrate is an ambitious installation that recognizes the essential power of the voice as a vehicle for freedom, collaboration, and radical imagination in ways that are emblematic of Boyce’s social practice. The exhibition emerges from film and photographic documentation generated over two days of gatherings and events at the Queens Museum. Working directly with local organizations, the film shoots brought together a diverse group of New Yorkers, artists, educators, and the Resistance Revival Chorus to explore the relationship between artistic expression and the formation of community. Drawing from the creative abundance that regularly congregates at the Museum, Boyce facilitated performances in which participants were invited to make, sing, speak, or move to open up possibilities for play and social exchange. Documentation of these improvised encounters becomes material for multi-channel videos, kaleidoscopic wallpaper prints, photographs, and sculptural constructions presented in immersive installations. For Demonstrate , Boyce’s works across a range of media direct our attention to moments of celebration, commemoration, testimony, and ritual. A multitude of cultural activities are featured in the exhibition from artmaking and movement workshops to the installation and opening ceremony of the Día de Muertos community ofrenda . They are accompanied by individual performances and reflections from the Museum’s workshop participants and collaborating artists. Boyce’s shoot culminated in a procession led by the Resistance Revival Chorus around the Museum and into the Panorama of the City of New York. Their joyful call and response chants reverberate across the Museum’s galleries to exemplify how communities can unite to find hope and dream together in times of uncertainty. For Boyce, the collective voice in song offers not only a sense of vitality and belonging, but a form of healing. From June 1 to June 30, 2026, Boyce will also present Transform , a new video work that will be playing nightly in Times Square between 11:57pm and 12:00am as part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment program. The Midnight Moment program showcases a new artist’s work every month across more than 100+ digital billboards. Filmed at the Queens Museum, Transform uses Boyce’s mirroring and geometry techniques to create a surreal portrayal of artist Koyoltzintli performing Andean ancestral movements. Sonia Boyce: Demonstrate is organized by Lindsey Berfond, Assistant Curator and Studio Program Manager with Isa López, Administrative Assistant – Curatorial. About the Artist Sonia Boyce (DBE, RA) is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, drawing, photography, print, sound, and installation. In 2022, she presented FEELING HER WAY , a major commission for the British Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 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 Black British Arts Movement with figurative pastel drawings and photocollages that addressed issues of race and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, however, Boyce has shifted significantly to embrace a wider social practice that invites improvisation, collaboration, movement, and sound with other people. In 2016, Boyce was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London and in 2023, she was elected as an Honorary Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Science in Boston. In 2014, she became a Professor at University of the Arts London, where she holds the inaugural Chair in Black Art & Design. In the 2024 King’s New Year Honour’s List, Boyce was awarded a Damehood. Her works are held in many UK and international museum collections including TATE, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Arts Council Collection of England, London; British Council, London; Government Art Collection, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), Paris; and Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Barbados. Read more Toggle Sculpture Installation Film / Video Multi-disciplinary Photography Prints