Prem Sahib’s most disconcerting sculptures include a giant flea, a pair of hoodies suspended in the jaundiced glow of a sodium street lamp, and a cracked obsidian mirror which emits real-life hate speech recorded in a gay chatroom. His latest work is inspired by a figure arguably more sinister than anything he has previously confronted: Suella Braverman.
Alleus – the title is “Suella” spelt backwards – is a sound sculpture which aims to “send back” one of the former home secretary’s speeches, making her eat her words. Taking as its starting point a recording of Braverman addressing the House of Commons about the illegal migration bill, Sahib slows down her voice, isolates incendiary phrases, then reverses the audio until it becomes a tangle of nightmarish noise and backbench braying. In doing so, he seems to dredge up some primordial toxicity from within Braverman’s words.
“I treated it quite sculpturally because that’s the only way I know how to work with sound,” he says. “There’s one bit where it’s like foghorns, another that is quite metallic. It was interesting to think about what it meant to reverse it. For me, it was trying to refute her words, and have them mirror her sentiment of sending people back.”
The creator of this abrasive piece could hardly be gentler. Soft-eyed and softly spoken, the 41-year-old artist, whose set of a dozen lockers salvaged from the defunct gay sauna Chariots is part of the Tate collection, is sipping tea today in his London studio. It looks out directly on to a budget hotel across the road, and I find myself wondering if the guests over there can see us – hardly surprising given that Sahib engages with notions of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and banishment. For one nocturnal piece, Liquid Gold, he filled a gallery space with an amber glow that could only be viewed from the street outside. In another, titled Bruise, a smudge of light gradually appears on an exterior wall as night descends.
“Some of my work repositions the viewer on the outside looking in,” he says. “And a lot of what Braverman talks about involves protecting borders. I kept noticing the way she speaks on behalf of ‘the British people’, which feels very dark. It’s a violent, divisive idea because your agency is being removed when she says that. There’s also the positioning of ‘adult males under 40’, which isolates a threat to do with a certain demographic.”
Alleus was originally heard in Sahib’s 2023 exhibition The Life Cycle of the Flea. Now he is adapting it into a live performance. What new layers will the reimagining bring? “Having it sung by vocalists suspends or halts the way this kind of political rhetoric exists in the world,” he says. “There’s a compulsion to tune it out because it’s so familiar, but this interrupts that. And there’s something about the multiplicity of singers, and how we’re using polyphony and reverb, that counters the individual voice.”
Audience members will enter the space to find metal chairs in a spiral arrangement, evoking an absent orchestra. Attached to these chairs are tiny speakers, or “sound exciters”, through which the performance will be broadcast. The first act will be a live rendering of Alleus, which Sahib has transcribed phonetically to enable the three singers to vocalise its more abstract parts. Then the speech will be fragmented and distorted still further. “Let me show you,” he says, scooting forward to his desk, and playing an audio file which makes Braverman sound like a demonic Pinky and Perky. A sequence that suggests a swarm will reflect Braverman’s warnings that immigration in the 20th century was “a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming”.
Despite naming the piece after Braverman, Sahib is reluctant to make it all about her. “Obviously, it starts with her because I found her speech so dehumanising. But with the reversal in the title – ‘Alleus’ sounds like ‘alias’ – I liked how it became capacious. Even after she’s gone, there will be someone else espousing that kind of hate.” Braverman talks in the speech about her own parents, invoking the idea of the good and grateful immigrant. How does her racial background complicate her rhetoric? “I’m interested in that but I don’t know yet how to talk about it,” he admits. “There’s definitely an issue there about respectability, and what belonging is contingent on.”
Sahib’s recent book That Fire Over There contains excerpts from his dreams, some of which feature cameo appearances by Boris Johnson. Has he dreamed about Braverman? “Not yet,” he says with a shudder. “She hasn’t entered that space, thankfully. I can do a good Suella, though. They needed someone to be her during rehearsals the other day, so I jumped in: ‘I’ll do it!’” He bites his lip. “I might’ve been a bit too keen.”
Alleus is performed at Somerset House, London, on 21 March and will be shown at Edinburgh Art Festival in August.
