Sophie Hoyle is an artist and writer whose practice explores an intersectional approach to postcolonial, queer, feminist, anti-psychiatry and disability issues.
They draw on biographical experiences of being queer, non-binary and part of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) diaspora to look at wider forms of structural violence. They explore the relation of the personal to (and as) political, individual and collective anxieties, and how alliances can be formed where different kinds of inequality and marginalisation intersect. From life-long experiences with healthcare infrastructures and having their body measured by biomedical technologies, they became interested in biofeedback and biohacking as a way of reclaiming autonomy, and began researching its historical overlap with technologies of state and military surveillance and control.
Bursary plans
I intend to expand on my research into the history of biomedical technologies rooted in biopolitical control, and direct this towards making new, collaborative performance-based work. Performance is a personally and politically charged area, with an ongoing negotiation and productive friction in presenting or performing the self, including a ‘sick’ or pathologised body through psychiatric and neurological frameworks, as well as being subject to wider systems of ‘security’ and control. I am still negotiating how to ‘perform’ despite, or with, long-term illnesses, by incorporating these embodied experiences into my work, and generating new ways to approach and adapt to them.
