British artist and stage designer Es Devlin has unveiled a major new installation at the National Portrait Gallery, converting the institution into a shifting archive of ordinary faces. Titled A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery, the work runs from May 14th through October 27th, 2026 and invites people across the U.K. to contribute to an ever-growing portrait of the nation.
Created with Google Arts & Culture Lab, the installation merges Devlin’s charcoal-and-chalk aesthetic with AI-driven imaging technology developed over three years. Participants upload selfies through a dedicated platform, where their likeness is rendered into softly animated portraits before entering a continuous stream of faces projected throughout the gallery’s History Makers space.
A collective portrait in constant motion
Rather than celebrating royalty, political figures, or celebrities, Devlin redirects portraiture toward the public itself. Faces drift into one another in an endless visual flow, creating a restless portrait of Britain shaped by multiplicity, overlap, and change.
Visitors become active participants rather than passive viewers, contributing their own image to the installation while receiving a downloadable digital portrait in return. Alongside the project, the gallery hosts free drawing workshops encouraging visitors to approach portraiture through observation, gesture, and personal interpretation.
Es Devlin examines identity, technology, and collective presence
For Devlin, national identity is fluid—shaped through migration, coexistence, memory, and shared experience rather than fixed narratives. The installation arrives amid ongoing conversations around belonging and representation in Britain, themes that have long surfaced throughout her participatory works.
Although built through advanced AI systems, the installation feels strikingly tactile and human. Expressions flicker briefly before dissolving, imperfections remain intact, and faces blur together without fully disappearing. That instability becomes central to the work’s emotional charge, reflecting the fractured yet interconnected reality of contemporary life.
Known internationally for immersive stage environments created for artists including Beyoncé and Adele, Devlin continues her shift toward large-scale contemporary art installations. We sit down with Es Devlin to explore the rituals of creativity, the future of shared cultural spaces, and the ways art can reconnect us with each other and the planet.
