In 1993, in an attempt to break away from what Boyce considered the limitations of her art practice, thus far, she began to make small (peculiar) sculptures made from store-bought and actual hair. It was at this point that a complete rupture occurred from the pastel drawings of the 1980s that had brought the artist to critical attention.

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The hair sculptures were first shown at the 181 Gallery in Hammersmith, London, in 1993 in an exhibition titled ‘Do you want to touch?’ and brought the artist into discussions about art as an interactive and participatory encounter that progressed a more socially engaged practice.

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The hair objects, often plaited and sewn, also propelled a discussion about the fragmented African-diasporic body as a body of excess meaning (Frantz Fanon) and that one element of the body could act as a representative whole of a racialised group identifiable through its body parts.

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The exhibition, ‘Do You Want to Touch?’ encouraged visitors to the exhibition to engage directly with the works on display, thus breaking the tacit agreement of reverence and ‘respectful’ distance often expected in the gallery space between gallery-goers and artworks.

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Boyce's hair pieces can be seen as metonymic signifiers of race, partial indicators of 'blackness' which mark the simultaneous presence and absence of black people within our society, they also defy the reduction of racial difference into a singular, undifferentiated sign. Rather, they present us with a galaxy of signs and possible readings which remain partial and inconclusive without the agency of the viewer to complete the narrative - Gilane Tawadros