Artist and designer Es Devlin's outstanding works have challenged standard ideas about stagecraft and its role in society. Straddling the fields of art, opera, dance, theater, fashion, and music, her practice engenders innovative forms of kinetic sculpture. Her designs have filled millions of people with wonder: from the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics ceremonies to astonishing set designs for touring superstars, as well as opera and ballet productions in Europe's major cities. Es Devlin will examine the changing nature and scale of Devlin's work--from solitary, contemplative pieces to collective, stadium-sized experiences--through extensive process work (sketches, behind-the-scenes photographs, etc.) in order to highlight and celebrate the unique breadth of her output. More than sixty projects are featured from across the globe, finishing with her design for the UK Pavilion at the Dubai Expo in 2021. Thematic texts on Devlin's work are interleaved with interviews with those who have worked with Devlin in the worlds of theater, opera, architecture, pop music, design, and art, including stellar names such as Sam Mendes, Bjarke Ingels, Anna Wintour, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Es Devlin is both a monograph on an incomparable talent whose work connects with popular audiences and a true source of inspiration for design professionals and students.
Devlin's protean work is rooted in a lifelong practice of reading and drawing. From sketches in the margins of texts, be they poetry, drama, song lyrics, opera libretti, climate reports or 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, multi-disciplinary cultural manifestations in recent times, from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, Serpentine, V&A, Barbican, Imperial War Museum, and the Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and the National Theatre, as well as Olympic Ceremonies, Super Bowl half-time shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for Beyoncé, The Weeknd, U2, Rosalía, Dr. Dre, and Kendrick Lamar. 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.