An everyday practice by Es Devlin

Few artists have the capacity to consistently shape the world’s cultural landscape with such frequency and impact as Es Devlin. Renowned for her monumental choral installations and mirrored mazes at Tate Modern and Superblue Miami, as well as collaborations with Beyoncé, U2, and The Weeknd, and stage designs for esteemed fashion houses like YSL, Dior, and Louis Vuitton, her influence extends far beyond the confines of the stage and catwalk. Devlin’s immersive installations at the major art institutions including the Lincoln Centre, V&A and Serpentine, and global events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl showcase her ability to captivate the imagination of millions. Across all scales and forms, her work is transformative. 

A retrospective of Devlin’s work recently opened at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum of Design in New York. Showcasing 30 years of work, An Atlas of Es Devlin provides a comprehensive overview of her practice whilst also acting as an immersive art installation. The exhibition, on view through August 11, 2024, along with Thames&Hudson’s sculptural 900 page publication, highlights her talent for cross-disciplinary work, her ability to create immersive environments, and her skill in reshaping cultural experiences.

hube: Given the focus on nature in your work, what do you consider most important in the struggle to maintain balance between nature and humanity?

Es Devlin: Read, learn, and practise. 

For me, it’s important to read as much and as widely as possible. I seek authors and poets that help me to understand the roots of the structures and systems—economic, civic, and cultural—that have led to our current state of separation from one another and from the rest of the biosphere. I read writers who guide me towards practical ways of reconnecting with one another and with other species and the planet.

The authors who have guided me include Joanna Macy, David Abram, Timothy Morton, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Emma Dabiri, Simon Barnes, Arundhati Roy, Jason Hickel, and Yanis Varoufakis, among many others. They help me to understand that our current systems are relatively recent. They encourage and console me that our current civic structures will evolve if we act collectively to change them.

Daily, hourly practice. When I was learning the violin as a child, I practised every day.

I try now to practise re-connection, with other people, with other species, with the planet and beyond, to practise un-separation between me and the rest of the biosphere, the way I might practise daily scales on a violin, to connect my fingers with the bow, the resonating wooden chamber, in order to make music.

I try daily to practise seeing the patterns that are continuous between the structures within my body and the natural structures that surround me. I try to learn the names of the animals and plants that I encounter. Every time we learn the name of a more than human species we make a habitat for it within our imagination.

Every time I find myself in a situation that situates me within a hierarchy, I try to take actions, however small, that soften the border between myself and others. I try to retrieve the fundamental human connection from within the illusory construct of human separation.

h: When creating worlds and spaces, you often use architectural imagery. If you were to select your own architectural project, would you choose to design a museum, a church, or a theatre?

ED: I would aim to fuse the architecture of church, theatre, and art museum. I think we go to each of these places to experience phenomena that are larger than ourselves and to become part of a temporary community, a rehearsal society. A public choral sculpture that I made in 2022 outside Tate Modern, Come Home Again, drew its form and Evensong ritual format from St. Paul’s Cathedral across the river, while inviting in audiences that were there to experience the art inside the Tate. It was a fusion of art and ritual.

h: ‘An Atlas of Es Devlin,’ is a monograph of your work and an art installation in and of itself. Could you share your experience working in the two-dimensional paper space?

ED: Reading is a physical as well as a cerebral experience. You travel through layers of paper with your hands, as well as your eyes and mind. I think we learn through our fingers and arms. The Atlas is a book that invites you to unfold concertina-ed pages, you need to sit down at a table to read it, a bit like playing a piano or an accordion, it activates elbows and arms as well as hands. I hope the words and images within the book become lodged within your muscle memory and fused to the place on the planet where you sat while reading it.

h: New technologies are permeating all aspects of our lives, and in doing so, are expanding and shaping creative possibilities for artists. Are there any developments you anticipate from scientists and engineers in the future? And is there a specific area of scientific research that you are following with interest?

ED: I read as much as I can about developments in AI. I learned a lot from Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave and Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0. The Italian theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli, with whom I collaborated in 2018, has taught me much about quantum physics. I greatly enjoyed Todd Eckert’s Kagami at the Roundhouse which used AR to conjure Ryuichi Sakamoto playing the piano.

I prefer to encounter life directly through my hands and feet and eyes and skin. I’m interested in technologies that invite us to permeate screens and access the planet. I would really like to be able to cut a hole in a film at the cinema and walk through it to the world beyond.

h: You began your career as a theatre designer, constructing realities envisioned by others. What does creative interpretation mean to you? Do you believe it knows no bounds?

ED: Whether I am working in drama, opera, contemporary pop music, or making an art installation or sculpture to be shown at a museum or gallery, there are usually primary texts at the heart of my practice. I aim to conjure a physical environment or set of forms that help an audience to inhabit and be moved and changed by my and my collaborators’ interpretation of the primary texts and by the texts themselves.