A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin brings all of the artist's work together in one compact sculptural cube-shaped 1000 colour page volume. Devlin's protean work is rooted in a lifelong practice of reading and drawing. From sketches in the margins of texts-including poetry, drama, song lyrics, opera libretti, climate reports, and endangered species lists-emerge the technically advanced, collectively imagined universes for which she is globally renowned. Fragile miniature paintings, paper cuts, and small mechanical cardboard models form the seeds of some of the most iconic, large-scale, multidisciplinary cultural manifestations in recent times, from public sculptures and installations outside Tate Modern and the Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs at the Metropolitan Opera, Olympic ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for globally celebrated musicians.
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.
Following the award-winning success of the first edition, originally published in 2023 with a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin is both contracted in size while expanded in extent, featuring 30 new projects from her recent output, showcasing an artist committed to exploring the limits of the visual arts. Spanning over thirty years of creativity, the tome features Devlin's personal commentaries on each work, as well as interviews with her collaborators.
About the Author
ES DEVLIN (born London 1971) is genre-defying artist whose work spans sculpture, performance, drawing, language and light. Devlin views an audience as a temporary society in which new perspectives can be rehearsed. Her luminous public artworks invite participation in communal choral works at major sites and institutions including V&A Museum, Trafalgar Square, Tate Modern, Serpentine, National Portrait Gallery, Imperial War Museum, and Lincoln Centre Plaza.
Her practice has been documented in retrospective exhibitions at the London Design Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Casa Bradesco São Paulo, Futura Seoul, Powerhouse Parramatta, Sydney and ArtScience Museum Singapore. Her kinetic stage sculptures in theatres, opera houses, arena and stadia have redefined the art of performance design in collaboration with the world's most celebrated musicians. A fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, Devlin serves as Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the University of Oxford.
