An Atlas of Es Devlin

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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 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present “An Atlas of Es Devlin” from Nov. 18 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. 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.

Her expansive mirrored “Forest of Us” invites viewers to inhabit the visual symmetry between the bronchial structures that allow people to breathe and the branching tree geometries that make breathing possible. The installation is still on view, having inaugurated Superblue Miami alongside new works by James Turrell in 2020. She was the subject of the Netflix documentary “Abstract: The Art of Design,” and has received multiple Olivier, Tony and Emmy awards, as well as an Ivor Novello award and a CBE. About Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 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. An Atlas of Es Devlin, the first monograph on Devlin’s genre-defying practice, is an experiential publication encompassing art, activism, theater, poetry, music, dance, opera and sculpture.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.” 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

The publication of An Atlas of Es Devlin coincides with the artist’s 30-year archive exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and her recent project credits include Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour – which has become the highest-grossing tour by a female artist in history. She also designed the visuals for U2’s opening performance at the groundbreaking MSG Sphere Las Vegas. Her sculptures have been displayed at the Serpentine, V&A, Barbican and Tate Modern, and her professional accolades include Olivier, Tony and Emmy awards, as well as an Ivor Novello and a CBE. 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 will immerse visitors in the artist’s studio and archive. Centering archival artifacts, the exhibition will reveal the remarkable breadth, rigor and iterative process underlying Devlin’s transformative, multidisciplinary work.” Exhibition design by Es Devlin Studio, with designers of record and fabrication by Pink Sparrow. Graphic design by Morcos Key. Support The soundscapes created by Polyphonia aka composers Jade Pybus and Andy Theakstone include music from Es Devlin’s hugely popular immersive artworks A Forest of Us (2021) at Superblue, Miami, BLUESKYWHITE (2021) at 180 Studios, London, and several new works that will be shown in her new exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum of Design, New York (2023).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. Artist and stage designer Es Devlin’s work explores 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. Generous support is provided by Amita and Purnendu Chatterjee, Lisa Roberts and David Seltzer, Kimberly Schuessler, and Morgan M. Schuessler, Jr. 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 Becomes a Show