Miseris Succurrere Disco

Miseris Succurrere Disco takes its title from the motto of the former Middlesex Hospital, which The Fitzrovia Chapel served: most simply translated as “I learn to help those in need” and originating from Virgil’s Aeneid — Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco (“Having known misfortune myself, I am learning to help those in distress”). The exhibition reflects on how personal tragedy can awaken empathy, mercy and collective care.

Set within the Chapel’s luminous Byzantine-inspired interior, the exhibition explores grief, sanctuary and transcendence through a series of newly commissioned works, inviting audiences into an experiential, durational environment shaped by sound, light and scent. The curators imagine the chapel as a vessel of memory — asking what the marble might recall if it could listen: solitary expressions of grief, whispered prayers and bargaining with fate, the call and response of services, and moments of reassurance shared between strangers.

The exhibition is accompanied by a limited-edition booklet, designed by Chris Bigg of v23, photographed by Paul Heartfield. It includes a specially commissioned text, “The Sick and Lame of Soho” by author Chloe Aridjis.

At the heart of the exhibition is a major sound commission by the experimental vocal collective NYX, featuring six vocalists — Rhianna Compton, Sian O’Gorman, Rachel Oyawale, AK Patterson, Plumm and Helen Walpole — with string and organ arrangements by multi-instrumentalist Alicia Jane Turner. Created as a choral and electronic composition, the 20-minute work takes visitors on a transcendental journey from despair to solace, looping three times an hour within an enhanced acoustic environment developed with Arup.

Working in dialogue with NYX’s sound piece, scenographer Emmanuel Biard’s light sculpture traces the spine of the building from the chapel’s marble altar, transforming the space from intimate and shadowed to expansive and euphoric. Olfactive design studio Denim-Sykes contribute a scent work in two parts — a faint, ghostlike note in the narthex evoking the memory of the Middlesex Hospital corridor once connected to the chapel, and a second, more present scent of petrichor near the altar. Displayed on the chapel font is ‘Unresurrectable Biologies – Un-undead 2’ by Turner Prize winner Tai Shani. This sculptural object anchors the space as a symbolic totem.