Phoebe Boswell

Phoebe Boswell

b. 1982, Nairobi
lives in London

Kenyan-born multimedia artist and filmmaker Phoebe Boswell grew up in the Arabian Gulf and London, where she studied at Central Saint Martins and the Slade School of Fine Art. Boswell’s production includes charcoal and pastel drawings of enormous proportions that recount on a grand scale the griefs, traumas, journeys and triumphs of her subjects in a manner that recalls the allegorical epics of medieval tapestries. She explores themes of migration and belonging in the visual recounting of her own history and the stories of her subjects, which often take on a mythic quality. Her work is infused with digital media, such as animation, film, interactivity, and audio, elements that she uses to represent feminine and marginalized subjects. Boswell has won several awards and accolades, including the Future Generation Art Prize’s Special Prize in 2017 and the 2020 Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists. EXPO Chicago hosted her solo presentation She Summons an Army, and Sapar Contemporary, New York, hosted Phoebe Boswell: Take Me to the Lighthouse (both 2018). Her work was shown at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and the Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2015). Her collaborative film Dear Mr Shakespeare was selected for the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, in 2017.

Phoebe Boswell, I Can Rage There, 2018. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 59 x 24 ½ inches. Courtesy the artist and Sapar Contemporary