Sonia Boyce at Hauser & Wirth
From September 4 to October 18, 2025, Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York will host Improvise with What We Have, the new exhibition by British artist Sonia Boyce. Awarded the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Boyce continues her exploration of performance, voice, and collective practice, transforming the gallery into a space for exchange and experimentation.
An Aesthetic of Encounter
Known for her immersive installations, the artist combines video, photography, sound, and performative interventions. Each work captures a moment of shared creation: singers improvising together, fragmented images overlapping, gestures repeated and recomposed. Nothing is fixed; everything is in motion. The viewer, invited to navigate through these fragments, becomes an active participant in a dialogue where art reinvents itself in real time.
“Improvise with What We Have” can be read as a motto: to work with who we are, what we have, and what we share. In a world often dominated by the pursuit of the spectacular and the finished, Sonia Boyce instead asserts the power of the unfinished and the collective. Improvisation becomes both a tool of resistance and a celebration of diversity and the present moment.
Far from the austerity sometimes associated with conceptual art, Boyce cultivates a generous energy, driven by music and performance. Her work explores notions of identity, memory, and community, always with the vitality of play and sharing. In the heart of Chelsea, this exhibition conveys a simple yet powerful message: creating together, with what we have, is already a way of transforming the world.