St Mary le Strand will host a new large-scale installation, Congregation, by Es Devlon.
Over the past four months, Es Devlin has been making large scale chalk and charcoal portraits of 50 Londoners who have experienced forced displacement from their homelands. The drawings will be displayed in the eighteenth-century church of St Mary le Strand, and accompanied by choral music performed outside the church at dusk each evening.
The work has been created in partnership with UK for UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency’s national charity partner.
It’s free to view and open to the public daily:
Thursday 3 October – Wednesday 9 October
10am till 6pm
With a free public choral performances outside The Courtauld at 7pm each evening on 4 – 9 October
Each portrait sitter is a co-author of the work. Devlin carries out the first 45 minutes of the drawing session without any knowledge of her sitter/co-author. After 45 minutes the drawing is paused while the co-author tells Devlin their story, then the drawing resumes.
The co-authors represent a vibrant London congregation whose roots extend across the globe to Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, Tanzania, Chile, Venezuela, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Germany.
The work is being made in response to the history of St Mary le Strand, the first of 12 churches to be completed according to Queen Anne’s commission of 50 new churches to replace those lost in the Great Fire of London. St Mary’s Scottish Catholic architect James Gibbs practiced in secret at a time of severe persecution, weaving emblems of the exiled Catholic James of Scotland within the architecture of the building. The church is also replete with Masonic symbols and was the site of masonic gatherings whose secret congregation included both Catholic and Jewish members, in spite of public prohibition.
Es Devlin said: “I was moved in 2022 by the generosity of spirit with which we, as a country and as individuals, offered support to those displaced by the war in Ukraine. I wanted to understand why we have not yet been drawn to show an equivalent abundance of support to those displaced in comparable circumstances from other countries including Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and many more. I went to UK for UNHCR 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.
I am beginning each portrait without knowing my sitter/co-author’s story. For the first forty-five 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. I am trying to draw in order to better perceive and understand the structures of separation, the architectures of otherness that I suspect may stand between us and the porosity to others that we are capable of feeling when these structures soften.”
The work, curated by Ekow Eshun, has been developed in collaboration with King’s College London in partnership with The Courtauld.
The Diocese of London works in partnership with the charity Housing Justice to provide temporary accommodation for London’s destitute asylum-seekers, refugees and other forced migrants, while they resolve their immigration status.
If you have a spare room that you could offer to a homeless asylum-seeker, refugee or other migrant in need, find out more on our website here.
