Sonia Boué
Artist - Writer - Consultant
All photo credits Reece Straw, 2024
Look Well After Yourself
A new installation by Sonia Boué commissioned by the John Hansard Gallery for the exhibtion Las Gemelas, Arrival (a lexicon of unmaking) 05/10/24 –– 11/01/25
Las Gemelas (The Twins), are the creative duo Sonia Boué and Ashokkumar D Mistry. Together they create art through conversation and by valuing each other’s individuality. What emerges from their collaboration are vivid expressions of introverted reflection and flamboyant extroversion.
Las Gemelas, Arrival (a lexicon of unmaking) presents their collaboration for the first time and takes inspiration from the Basque child refugee archives, held within Special Collections at the University of Southampton. In 1937, almost 4000 Basque child refugees from Northern Spain were evacuated to Southampton as a consequence of the Spanish Civil War.
Boué and Mistry differ in their relationship to these archives, but they share a heritage of forced migration. They have worked in parallel to produce responses which are contrasting yet complimentary. Mistry unpicks preconceptions of history and storytelling with a multi-sensory promenade of experiences, while Boué seeks to mediate the exile experience
Photo credit Reece Straw, 2024
Look Well After Yourself, comprises sculpture, photographs, archive material and online elements, including films, photographs and a radio broadcast (which can be accessed with the QR code below). As a body of work, it invites the viewer into a deep zone of caring and contemplation, with a radically introverted practice.
As a child, Boué’s family lived in political exile in England due to the Spanish Civil War. ‘Look well after yourself’ was a phrase the artist’s father used whenever they parted. For Boué, it holds a meaning beyond words, as it is loaded with the emotional landscape of exile. Accordingly, her relationship to the Basque child refugee archives –– the inspiration for the exhibtion –– is familiar and presents an emotionally entangled heritage.
The work can be understood through the lens of postmemory practice in relation to collective traumas (such as holocausts and civil wars) where the experiences and raw emotion of one generation are transmitted to subsequent generations. Traumatic memory is inherited and comes to feel present and real. Inspired by handcrafts found in the archive, Boué has learned to make pom-pom sculptures and conjured a space for memory, healing and repair.
Boué has created one hundred pom-poms inspired by the fringe on a Spanish souvenir tambourine. Pom-pom Sculptures form an all-embracing motif including neurodivergent stimming (based on repetitive motion) and rumoured Spanish anti-aircraft guns. They rest on steel supports inspired by Belisha Beacons and bring to mind our collective care for safe crossings. Brightly coloured wool provides warmth and comfort to soothe the homesickness felt by the Basque children.
Boué’s fascination with the tambourine fringe has uncovered geographical connections between Spain and locations in the UK where the Basque children were cared for. The West Yorkshire Spinners company have donated vivid ColourLab wools for the pom-poms, thereby celebrating the generous spirit of Keighley, where one hundred children were given a home.
Working with wool for the first time, Boué interweaves themes of exile, separation and dislocation with transgenerational memory care. Mindful of the impact of traumatic memories, she codes wellbeing into each woollen form, through the self-soothing repetition of winding and trimming.
Formed by hand with scissors and steam, Boué’s engagement with wool has resulted in sensory immersion, as she lovingly tends to the pom-poms as though they were the children. This allows her to consider them as individuals through thousands of woollen strands. The children experienced aerial bombardments first-hand and, so, Boué has reintroduced the wool’s natural lanolin to protect them against extreme conditions.
The work speaks to the politics of heightened introversion, neurodivergent world-building and the artist’s tentative engagement with public spaces. Boué, however, instils a sense of agency and dynamism in this work. Her vibrant pom-poms honour and uphold a memory officially buried during the long years of Franco’s dictatorship and Spain’s transition to democracy.
Photographs from Boué’s family collection feature her father leading a group of Basque children through a series of exercises in Oxfordshire, in June 1939. When newly exiled from Spain, caring for the Basque children was his first job in the UK and Boué traces the callisthenics to her father’s education during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–39).
These images mark his arrival to safety from the brutal throes of a bloody civil war. They seem to capture a youthful vigour and determination to uphold and pass on his vision of a free Spain. Boué’s photographic response echoes her father’s pose, providing an entry point for her work.
The nearby vitrine contains items that form a Pom-pom Archive where Boué’s broad research processes are acknowledged, and a wider body of work is brought into focus. The archive provides insights into Boué’s expansive postmemory work and contains traces of her immersive pom-pom-making. Creating one hundred viable pom-poms became a performance-like ritual and a dialogue with the past, lasting several months. This led Boué to break her social media addiction and heal her gut, also inspiring her to write the Neurowilding Blog. The Archive features items from Boué’s personal collection, bringing to the fore her fascination with material memory.
Pom-poms made in pale colours and a collapsed woollen form are displayed as artefacts, demonstrating the beauty and significance of process works. A tub of pom-pom trimmings has been preserved like the gut-healing pickles, sauerkraut and kimchi originally stored in this everyday plastic container. Boué’s use of lanolin and samples of raw wool, used as packing for the safe transit of pom-poms to the gallery suggest an extra layer of protection.
Two photographs, Boue’s sketchbook and a delicately sewn vintage postcard comprise a Lexicon of Gestures and offer a glimpse of hand-cut collage explorations. Boué’s copy of Twinkind is suggestive of Las Gemelas’ unusual twinning and the theme of neurodivergence. It sits alongside the open pages of a chapter by Dr. Cara Levey on the theme of ‘militant luggage’ and Boué’s previous work on Spanish exile.
Boué’s groundbreaking writing and publishing practice is foregrounded with a new essay, which includes a brief biography of her father. It is displayed with an original copy of his play Tierra Cautiva, published in 1962, the year of Boué’s birth. A catalogue of Boué’s 2016 project Through An Artist’s Eye summons the antifascist spirit of the British artist Felicia Browne, who died in action in Spain on the Aragon front in 1936.
Together with the souvenir postcard, a small black toy castanet belonging to Boué echoes objects found in the Basque child refugee archive, sparking a profound sense of cultural recognition and solidarity.
