Sonia Boué

Sonia Boué
Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

STATEMENT

For me, collage-making is a redemptive process of making the fragmentary whole. Collage is also a cipher where ritual and allusion become embedded in strata-like paper layers. My work is experimental and often concerned with texture and the practice of décollage. I find I can work in ways unimaginable in any other medium, due to the expressive range and accessibility of the collage form. I use collage to capture and process the present moment and thus my subject can be fluid and ever-changing.

My collages respond to my subject and the sensory qualities of my materials––the properties of paper are extremely important to me. I need to love the texture and print quality of an image source for a collage to flow. How papers adhere to a substrate is key to this feeling of flow––some papers are so delicate they melt into the substrate while others resist. There’s always a tussle between discipline and experimentation in my work, but I’d rather go in a new direction than follow a linear path. The common thread is a need for order and resolution.

As a neurodivergent person, I’ve often felt dislocated and in-between, collage is a liminal form that crosses many divides. Along with its accessibility, I think this is why its collage has lent itself so perfectly to my Arts Council England-funded participatory project and forthcoming publication for neurodivergent people––Neurophototherapy: Playfully unmasking with photography and collage.

BIO

Sonia Boué is an Anglo-Spanish multiform artist and collagist. She is also a writer on neurodiversity in the arts. Sonia has a significant body of post-memory works, including commissions with Tate Britain and the BBC. Her current focus is an innovative neuro-inclusive participatory collage practice. In 2021, she developed a method of hand-cut collage for her Arts Council England (ACE) funded project, Neurophototherapy-a collage-based support for neurodivergent people.

In 2022, she received a DASH/Ampersand Award commission to stage a live collage intervention on Instagram. She received further ACE funding in 2023, to publish Neurophototherapy: Playfully unmasking with photography and collage, which has also been generously supported by The Doug + Laurie Kanyer Art Collection. Sonia also has several works in the prestigious Doug + Laurie Kanyer Art Collection, has written the foreword for Laurie Kanyer’s 2023 publication, Collage Care: The Method, and had collages published in The Sand Journal and Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture. In 2023, Sonia was shortlisted for a Contemporary Collage Magazine Award for Neurophototherapy.

ARTIST CONTACT

[click to email]
www.soniaboue.co.uk

IMAGES