CONGREGATION by Es Devlin: 50 (displaced) Londoners. Their Portraits. Their Journeys.
Renowned artist Es Devlin unveils CONGREGATION, a monumental collective portrait installation created in support of UK for UNHCR, the national charity partner of the United Nations Refugee Agency.
Curated by Ekow Eshun and developed in collaboration with King’s College London and The Courtauld, the work takes place at the jewel-like eighteenth-century church of St Mary le Strand.
It will be open to the public from the 4th to the 9th October 2024, coinciding with Frieze London.
CONGREGATION features large-scale chalk and charcoal portraits of 50 Londoners who have experienced forced displacement from their homelands. Presented as a projection-mapped tiered sculpture, the work offers a luminous encounter with those who bring their gifts to London.
Each evening at 7pm the installation will be accompanied by free choral performances fusing the voices of The Genesis Sixteen, The London Bulgarian Choir and the South African Cultural Gospel Choir in the pedestrianised area opposite The Courtauld. (Please note there won't be a choral performance on Monday 7th October).
The work has been co-authored by the 50 portrait sitters - reflecting on their lives in London, as well as their journeys from more than 25 countries, including Syria, Sudan, Ukraine and Afghanistan. The accompanying soundscape is composed by Polyphonia, with film sequences created in collaboration with filmmaker Ruth Hogben and choreographer Botis Seva.
Exhibition & Talks
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King's College London - Book a free ticket here
Join Es Devlin, Ekow Eshun and Eid Aljazairli in conversation with Dr Leonie Ansems de Vries, the Director of the Sanctuary Programme at King’s, as they explore the entangled histories of migration, colonialism, and the global movements that have shaped our world.
The panel will delve into the complex intersections where individual and collective journeys meet the broader forces of imperialism and displacement and examine how migration is not just a movement of people, but a profound narrative of resilience, struggle, identity, and power.
The talk is programmed to coincide with Es Devlin’s installation Congregation, curated by Ekow Eshun at St Mary Le Strand, in partnership with UNHCR for UK, The UN Refugee Agency and The Courtauld.
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Join contemporary artist and stage designer Es Devlin CBE RDI in conversation with writer, curator and broadcaster Ekow Eshun.
In this very special event, the pair will discuss Es Devlin’s major new work, Congregation, a new large-scale choral installation she has created in partnership with UK for UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency’s national charity partner at St Mary le Strand. The work, curated by Ekow Eshun, has been developed in collaboration with King’s College London in partnership with The Courtauld and will celebrate those who have brought their lives and their gifts to London, having experienced forced displacement from their homelands.
Ekow Eshun will also be discussing his new publication The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, which tells an intimate portrait of five remarkable Black men, and is a meditation on race, estrangement and the search for home.
“Between April and August this year I made large scale chalk and charcoal portraits of 50 strangers:
“You arrived dressed in a suit, as if for a formal occasion.
I knew only your first name, and nothing else about you,
except that at some point in your life, you had to seek refuge, and you sought it here. I drew you in chalk from the northern coast of France, and charcoal from forests in Kent, as you sat, lit from your right, holding an empty box on your lap like a gift.”
Each portrait sitter became a co-author of the work, describing what they envisaged would fill this box, their gifts: a series of luminous paintings like 50 stained glass windows. We are presenting the portraits as a monumental tiered illuminated sculpture within St Mary le Strand church: a collective portrait of those who bring their gifts to London.”