Boyce wins top prize at Venice Biennale

Artist Sonia Boyce won Britain the top prize at the Venice Art Biennale, the world's longest-running and most high-profile international exhibition of contemporary art.

“Feeling Her Way” — a sound installation of five Black British female musicians singing a cappella — took the Golden Lion for best national participation. Boyce is the first Black woman to represent Britain at the Venice event.

Saturday's other big prize, the Golden Lion for best artist in the Biennale's central exhibition, was won by American artist Simone Leigh for her “powerfully persuasive monumental sculptural opening to the Arsenale,” one of the two main exhibition sites. The artist presented her work “Brick House,” a 16-foot-tall bronze of a Black woman with cornrows and a domeshaped torso that combines the forms of a skirt and a clay house. It was first seen on the High Line in New York in 2019. Leigh is also representing the United States at this year's event, so she has a show of her own in the American Pavilion.

“I have been around the block a few times, but this is probably the biggest commission I've ever done,” Boyce said after the ceremony. “That was really a glorious challenge.

“The project at the center of the pavilion is about the question of collective remembering and resisting the erasure of women's voices within the British music system,” she added. “It's not just me celebrating.”

The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 as an exhibition of new art from around the world. There are 80 national pavilions at this year's event. The Venice Biennale runs through Nov. 27.