Community, Creativity and Camaraderie at the Queens Museum

Sonia Boyce spent two days in October 2025 at the Queens Museum, filming a variety of events that showed how art can bring people together. She captured the making of a Día de los Muertos altar, built by members of Hope TGNC Latinx in the Corona area. The group included transgender and gender‑nonconforming people, all of whom came together to honor their loved ones. A musician named Koyoltzintli played a five‑point water whistle, an instrument that comes from the Chorrera people of Ecuador. Singers joined the Resistance Revival Chorus and marched through the museum, ending with a view of New York City. These moments were recorded with minimal direction; spontaneity and improvisation guided the whole process. The result is an installation called “Demonstrate” that opened on June 27 at the same museum.It is Boyce’s first solo show in the United States and her first solo museum exhibition there. The show uses six films that appear on seven screens, all set in a room covered with her own bright prints. Her films blend the original footage with layers of text, interview clips and bold patterns. The images come from things she found in the museum’s storage: a crumpled piece of tinfoil from a middle‑school art project and marigolds that were placed on an altar. Boyce has a long history of breaking barriers in the art world. She was the first Black female artist to have work added to the Tate collection in 1987. In 2016 she became the first Black woman elected to the Royal Academy of Art, and in 2022 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. She was honored with a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2024.