NEW YORK, NY.- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has been presenting “An Atlas of Es Devlin” since Nov. 18, where it will continue through Aug. 11, 2024. The genre-defying British contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin (b. 1971) 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 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.

The exhibition includes previously unseen small-scale works that led to major public sculptures and choral installations exploring biodiversity, linguistic diversity and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated poetry at Tate Modern, V&A, Serpentine, Superblue Miami and Lincoln Center, as well as kinetic stage designs at London’s Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet and National Theatre. It features the sketches, paintings and mechanical cardboard models that evolved into the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony, the 2022 NFL Super Bowl half-time show with Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar, as well as monumental, illuminated stage sculptures for Beyoncé, U2, Rosalía and The Weeknd.

“An Atlas of Es Devlin” examines the origins, rigor and depth of Devlin’s process through a compelling journey into her 30-year archive, charting the evolution of form, scale and intention in her practice, from teenage drawings and paintings, to designs for theater, opera, stadium concerts and ceremonies, to her current engagement with climate and civilizational crises. The exhibition reveals thematic connections and trace the development of her groundbreaking ephemeral architectures.

“Es Devlin’s polymathic practice dissolves boundaries between art, activism, design, poetry, sculpture, music and architecture,” said Andrea Lipps, associate curator of contemporary design and head of Digital Collecting at Cooper Hewitt. “Within an environment conceived by Devlin herself, this exhibition immerses visitors in the artist’s studio and archive. Centering archival artifacts, the exhibition reveals the remarkable breadth, rigor and iterative process underlying Devlin’s transformative, multidisciplinary work.”

“I have spent 30 years translating words into images and spaces— transforming texts on a page into kinetic sculptures that encompass viewers with light and song and use magic to alter their perspective,” Devlin said. “My craft is to imagine worlds that don’t yet exist, to invite audiences to practice ‘interbeing’ within psychological architectures they have not previously inhabited, to remind viewers that they are not separate but connected to one another and to the biosphere. For this exhibition, I have gathered the drawings, fragile paper sculptures and small-scale revolving cardboard models that I and my studio team have been making over the past three decades, a miniature parallel practice at the root of the large-scale public performance and installation works.”

“Cooper Hewitt continues to push the boundaries and contribute to a more expansive definition of what design means today and how it relates to the complex world around us,” said Maria Nicanor, director of Cooper Hewitt. “Es’ work and her multidisciplinary practice embody that profound intention, which is so important to communicate to our audiences as the nation’s design museum.”

THE STUDIO

As visitors enter the galleries, they are 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 bring the objects and wall of the studio to life, encompassing viewers in Devlin’s voice and imagination.

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 models.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
“An Atlas of Es Devlin”
November 18th, 2023 - August 11th, 2024