1.Lygia Clark, Revista Manchete, Rio de Janeiro. Courtesy Associação Cultural O mundo de Lygia Clark. 2. Sonia BoyceBraided Wallpaper2023Digital repeat pattern on tan wallpaperDimensions variable.© Sonia Boyce.All Rights Reserved, DACS/Artimage 2024Courtesy of the artist, APALAZZOGALLERYand Hauser & Wirth Gallery.
Tickets available
2 Oct 2024 - 12 Jan 2025
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our exhibitions as accessible as possible for every visitor. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
For complete access information about the gallery, please visit here.
‘In these polarized times, giving people a space to explore objects, perform and play, alone and with strangers, feels like a radical, exhilarating proposition.’ – ARTnews
This Autumn, Whitechapel Gallery presents two exhibitions especially conceived to be in dialogue with each other. Lygia Clark: The I and the You and Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation explore pivotal moments in the artists’ careers, where each began experimenting with participatory practices.
Although separated by time and geography, and working in different cultural and socio-political contexts, the artists share a deep interest in addressing and shifting the relationship between artist, artwork and audiences, often inviting direct engagement with their works, including touch, manipulation, even inhabitation.
By pairing the two artists in this way, audiences are invited to reflect on both the similarities and differences in their works and approaches, while also providing a meeting point for different art histories and cultural contexts to meet.
Whitechapel Gallery has, over the years, played a significant role in championing Latin American art as well as presenting the work of British artists from diverse cultural backgrounds within the context of modern and international art histories. These parallel exhibitions continue such an enquiry, ensuring an expanded rather than atomised perspective on transnational art practices.
Artist Lygia Clark (1920 – 1988, Brazil) held a central role within the Brazilian neo-concrete avant-garde in the late-1950s. During extended trips to Europe, she participated in the burgeoning and dynamic London art scene of the 1960s, represented her country at the 1968 Venice Biennale and proposed participatory actions with students at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 1970s, before returning to Brazil in 1977. Despite having had a transnational career, it was only posthumously that her work began to receive wider international recognition following a large-scale retrospective exhibition which travelled to major European art institutions in the mid-1990s. Other international retrospectives followed including: Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art at MoMA in New York 2014 and most recently, Lygia Clark: Projeto para um Planeta, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, 2023.
Dame Sonia Boyce DBE RA (b. London, 1962) is an interdisciplinary artist and academic working across film, drawing, photography, print, sound, and installation. In 2022, she presented FEELING HER WAY for the British Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 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 British Black Arts Movement with figurative pastel drawings and photo collages that addressed issues of race and gender in Britain. Since the 1990s, Boyce has shifted significantly to embrace a social practice that invites improvisation, collaboration, movement, and sound with other people. Working across a range of media, Boyce’s practice today is focused on questions of artistic authorship and cultural difference.
In 2016, Boyce was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London and in 2023, she was elected 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 Honours List, Boyce was awarded a Damehood. Her work is in many UK and international museum collections including TATE, London; Saastamoinen Foundation, Finland; Centre Pompidou, France and Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, USA.
Lygia Clark: The I and the You has been generously supported by:Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at The London Community FoundationHenry Moore FoundationTrAIN Research Centre at University of the Arts London The Lygia Clark Exhibition CircleWith thanks to:Alison Jacques, LondonAssociação Cultural O Mundo de Lygia ClarkEmbassy of Brazil in London/Instituto Guimarães RosaLATAM Airlines
Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation has been generously supported by:Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at The London Community FoundationHauser & WirthThe Sonia Boyce Exhibition and Patron CirclesThe Lygia Clark Exhibition Circle:Toluwani Adejuyigbe, Ayo Adeyinka, Bimpe Nkontchou and Oba Nsugbe
With thanks to:APALAZZOGALLERYOMNI Colour
