THE latest work by the stage designer Es Devlin, Congregation, has been in St Mary le Strand, London, in the past week. It comprises 50 large charcoal-and-chalk portraits of people who found sanctuary in London. These were arranged in tiers towards the east end of the Baroque church.
Under the ornate ceiling of St Mary’s, Ms Devlin’s sitters — the “co-authors” of the choral installation — were individually illuminated and told their story: their reasons for fleeing their homeland, their journey to London, and their life in the capital.
The soundscape for the installation was formed by poetry by J. J. Bola, born in Kinshasa, who sat for one of the portraits; Recomposed, by Max Richter, a recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons; and Anton Bruckner’s sacred motet Locus iste (“This place”).
The music linked a choral performance held at 7 p.m. daily, next to the church gates, by the London Bulgarian Choir, the South African Cultural Gospel Choir, the Genesis Sixteen, and the choir of King’s College, London. When the South African singers swayed and clapped, their movement and body percussion spread to the choirs on either side, and to the crowd, like a Mexican wave.
Ms Devlin described the fusion of Bulgarian folk songs, Zulu, Ndebele, Xhosa, and the Latin of Locus iste and Elgar’s Ave Verum as “like being on a London bus on acid”. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who attended the dusk performance on the opening night, said that Congregation had moved him to tears. “This is the first time Es has made me cry; I was crying at art.”
Ms Devlin’s project began in February 2022, when she was moved by the generosity of the British public towards war refugees from Ukraine, contrasting this with political discourse about refugees in other parts of the world. “I went to UK for UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency’s national charity partner for the UK) to learn more about the numbers and contexts of the 117 million people currently displaced globally, and the experiences of refugees now living in the UK.”
Ekow Eshun, who curated Congregation, in partnership with King’s College and the Courtauld, said that artists had the ability to see into the future. He contrasted fears related to immigration with the fear of fleeing your home. “Fear is life and death, not livelihood.”
Ms Devlin’s approach to portraiture is based on viewing Lucian Freud’s sketchbook in the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld’s portrait collection spanning 500 years.
Sitters attended Ms Devlin’s studio in south London, and, for the first 45 minutes, she drew without speaking, and then heard their story and completed the portrait. “For the first 45 minutes, I am drawing a stranger: I am drawing not only a portrait of a stranger, but also a portrait of the assumptions I inevitably overlay: I am drawing my own perspectives and biases.”
As an example of projecting biases, Ms Devlin spoke of drawing a young woman wearing a hijab, who revealed that she was a commercial pilot. This gave the artist a new perspective, and the sitter’s large black pilot’s watch, which had been a minor detail until then, was brought into the foreground. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played in the studio as the artist drew.
Designed by the Roman Catholic architect James Gibbs, St Mary le Strand was consecrated in 1724, three months before the publication of Vivaldi’s original work. The Priest-in-Charge, Canon Peter Babington, said that hosting Congregation in “London’s most beautiful 18th-century church” was an aspect of the “Jewel in the Strand” project in this recently pedestrianised cultural quarter.