Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
An Atlas of Es Devlin
November 18, 2023 – August 11, 2024
The genre-defying British contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin is globally renowned for her large-scale, illuminated installations and sculptures for performances. Her wide-ranging practice, which began in small-scale theater, has been experienced by millions in some of the world’s most prominent museums, galleries, opera houses, arena, and stadia. Her highly collaborative work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Devlin views the audience as a temporary society and invites public participation in communal works to encourage profound cognitive shifts.
For her first monographic museum exhibition, Devlin has installed her 30-year archive across the third floor of the museum. An Atlas of Es Devlin features over 300 sketches, paintings, illuminated paper cuts, and projection-mapped rotating miniature sculptures that form the seeds of some of the most iconic, cultural congregations of music, poetry, art, and activism in recent times.
Es Devlin, “Forest of Us.” Photo by Andrea Mora. Image courtesy of Es Devlin, 2023.
