The artist, who took lockers from a gay sauna into galleries, has turned the former home secretary’s speech about the illegal migration bill into a sinister sonic maelstrom
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.
