Can Artists Really Transform Space? Kaur And Sahib at Pitzhanger Manor

2025 is already well underway but there are several shows that show real promise. Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery in a bold move is presenting two transformative solo exhibitions that while seemingly taking a path through common topics like, history, identity, and belonging suggest something quite unique. Permindar Kaur’s “Mirror, Mirror” and Prem Sahib’s “Doubles” reinterpret the historic spaces of Sir John Soane’s architectural masterpiece, bringing the present into a place that has a long historical significance. And perhaps giving these topics a new creative lease.

For Kaur, this exhibition represents a significant milestone—her largest London institutional presentation to date. Throughout the main gallery and historic manor, her installations deploy a visual vocabulary of toys, clothing, and shelters to explore the complex relationship between domestic settings and identity formation. Like Annette Messager and Louis Bourgeois, Kaur shows child-like figures equipped with menacing appendages—claws, horns, beaks—stand as ambiguous sentinels, suggesting both protection and defiance. Drawing on cultural symbolism, including ceremonial Sikh colours of saffron and navy, her works simultaneously camouflage themselves within and assert their presence against Soane’s elegant interiors.

Prem Sahib, Apotropaic 1, 2023. Photo by Ben Westoby._web — Prem Sahib, Apotropaic 1, 2023. Photo by Ben Westoby

“I feel honored to have been invited by Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery,” says Kaur. “This exhibition marks both my first major solo exhibition in London and the first opportunity I have had to place my work in a stately home. The setting has offered me interesting possibilities to align strongly with my continuing interest in ‘Home.'”

The exhibition brings together new commissions like “Threshold” (2025) alongside recent works including “Washing Line Beds” (2024)—an installation of black steel bed frames overhung with laundry lines that explores questions of status and aspiration. The exhibition title evokes both self-reflection and the fairy-tale mirror in Snow White, probing childhood as a critical site of identity formation while questioning who holds the authority to construct a narrative, let alone describe truth.

As a counterpoint, Prem Sahib’s “Doubles” assembles objects and sculptural interventions spanning a decade, weaving connections between the manor, its surrounding park, and the broader local area. Sahib’s conceptual framework explores replication through multiple lenses—performance, mimicry, memory, deception, and perceived threat—while cleverly referencing Soane’s own fascination with repeated casts and innovative mirror placements.

“The works I am bringing together are unified by a deep connection to the surrounding area,” Sahib explains. “Sometimes focusing on seemingly fleeting details like a reflection, and other times, with weightier histories and biographical underpinnings—a double-take on the emotional residues embedded within a place.”

Permindar Kaur, 'Red Gold Indian Teddy', 2023. Photo by Richard Davies — Permindar Kaur, Red Gold Indian Teddy, 2023. Photo by Richard Davies

Central to Sahib’s exhibition is the relationship between interior and exterior. A major new bronze sculpture in Pitzhanger’s gardens—the artist’s most significant outdoor commission to date—mirrors its indoor counterpart, “Apotropaic 1” (2023), featuring suspended hooded sweatshirts in an ambiguous embrace that contemplates protection, tenderness, and presence/absence. Elsewhere, “Front” (2017) transposes a window from a former public toilet in neighboring Walpole Park into the building’s interior, while “Archive” (2019) brings ephemera from Sahib’s uncle—a 1980s race equality campaigner from nearby Southall—into the historic space.

At night, “Liquid Gold” (2016) transforms the manor into a luminous beacon, with a parallel installation illuminating a building in Southall during the exhibition run, creating a powerful visual connection between these historically and culturally significant sites.

While employing distinct aesthetic languages, both artists brilliantly repurpose Pitzhanger’s historic spaces to explore themes of belonging and marginalization. Kaur’s chameleon-like figures merge into the manor’s fabric—simultaneously interlopers and guests—while Sahib’s interventions suffuse the space with questions of mimicry and queer desire, challenging viewers to reconsider who belongs, who is seen, and who is heard in museums and civic spaces.