An Atlas of Es Devlin

Product Information

Celebrated Artist and Designer Es Devlin To Install 30-Year Archive in First Monographic Museum Exhibition Come Home Again,” her 16-meter-high monumental choral sculpture outside Tate Modern, drew over 7,000 visitors each day to join diverse London choirs and species in choral song during its showing in September 2022. Her rotating illuminated sculpture, “Your Voices,” entangled viewers within the 700 languages spoken in New York City in collaboration with the Endangered Language Alliance in December 2022. As visitors enter the galleries, they will be invited into a replica of Devlin’s London studio to sit at her desk surrounded by tools, materials and works in progress. As the studio lights dim, projections will bring the objects and walls of the studio to life, encompassing viewers in Devlin’s voice and imagination. An Infinite Archive

Devlin’s protean work is rooted in a lifelong practice of reading and drawing, especially sketching in the margins of texts. The final gallery is filled with the texts that have guided Devlin’s work—from the plays, song lyrics and opera libretti that have informed her performance sculptures to the works of fiction, poetry, geo-philosophy, anthropological economics, biology and climate science at the root of her art practice over the past decade. The texts are brought to life with a program of collective readings, and visitors are invited to participate in a cumulative artwork while gaining insights to inform their own practice and purpose. Publication Devlin’s work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Over the past decade her art practice has engaged with biodiversity, linguistic diversity, and collective AI-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works. Artist and polymath Es Devlin’s genre-defying practice encompasses art, activism, theatre, poetry, music, dance, opera and sculpture. This vinyl LP captures 20 of her iconic works’ soundscapes, with music produced by long-time collaborators Polyphonia, uniquely mixed with her voiceovers, including personal stories and poetry.

Support

A giant projection of Devlin’s hand appears to slice through one of the studio walls, inviting a journey through Devlin’s archive of never-before-seen paintings, drawings, paper sculptures, sketches and revolving cardboard models. Projected imagery transforms many of the humble cardboard sculptures into replicas of the final large-scale luminous edifices. An Atlas—A Film Exhibition design by Es Devlin Studio, with designers of record and fabrication by Pink Sparrow. Graphic design by Morcos Key. Support

The installation invites everyone to come and experience the monumental space that the artist has created for Free Your Mind. Find yourself surrounded by coloured light, sound and music, while contemplating a series of meditative texts read by Devlin herself. Devlin’s collective AI-generated poem continues to evolve online having been initiated in 2016 as “Poemportraits” at the Serpentine. It formed the basis of the UK Pavilion at the World Expo 2020, the first building to generate a collective poem on its facade every minute.

An Infinite Library

I couldn’t even put my finger on why I didn’t go that route as a student,” says Devlin. “But at the time, I felt much more comfortable walking into a room full of people staying up all night making model theatres, and I think you make those decisions based on which rooms you want to stay in, versus which rooms you just want to walk out of. But I guess after 30 years of collaborating, I’m interested to see what I might do without collaborating as well.” Made in collaboration with contemporary composers, Polyphonia, and video designer, Luke Halls, An Atlas of Es Devlin brings together poetry and prose that's inspired Devlin’s personal art practice since 2016 – and presents them as an illuminated ‘collective reading’ experience.