Sonia Boué is an Anglo-Spanish multiform artist. In ¡Buenos Días Dictador! she explores the duality of a childhood divided between schooldays in Birmingham, and holidays in Barcelona – which was then under Franco’s dictatorship.

As a child she was unaware of the repressive regime. This exhibition is an attempt to look back through fresh eyes, and find the dictator who was always hiding in plain sight.

Figures cut out of sewing patterns are tied to a specific time and place by the fashions they wear. These are laid over Boué’s haunting “dreamscapes” to illustrate a lost cultural memory, and capture the surrealism of being raised in two very different cultures.

In 2015 Boué was recognised by researchers at Tate Britain as a singular voice responding to this history within a British context. Subsequently Sonia featured in a film made by Tate Britain entitled Felicia Browne: Unofficial War Artist, and in 2016 she received an Arts Council grant for Through An Artist’s Eye, a collaborative project about the life and work of Felicia Browne (who was the only British female combatant and the first British volunteer to die in action in the Civil War).

Through her work, she seeks to recover aspects of historic memory (memoria historica) previously erased by political suppression.

Exhibition Opening

Thursday 11 January, 6-8pm
Join us to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Free – just come along.

Artist In Conversation

Friday 9 February, 3pm
Sonia Boué in conversation with one of the Old Fire Station team.
Free – please book your place.