SPANNING A 30-YEAR CAREER: ‘AN ATLAS OF ES DEVLIN.’

Since the release of the critically acclaimed monograph “An Atlas of Es Devlin” in October of last year, artist and stage designer Devlin has been travelling platforms worldwide, most recently in London and New York, discussing her life and her innovatory monograph. On stage at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Devlin expressed that the conception of the monograph revealed the two to be more intertwined than expected. “I discovered how much in need I was to make sense and to trace and define, to thread the pieces of myself together.” The monograph is her most personal endeavour yet, encapsulating her creative career and life, collating interviews, artwork, and analysis in a structurally complex format. It sums up a hard-to-box career; hence, the book itself pushes the boundaries structurally and conceptually. Es’ cousin and the designer behind the final form of the monograph, Daniel Devlin, says, “Because of the tight schedule, the book was being created and written, designed and laid out, produced, and proofed at the same time so that it was possible for ideas and new directions to be introduced at any stage of the process, keeping the whole project in an exciting state of flux.” Es describes this monograph as an invitation to the reader to apply their art and imagination. “It’s quite easy to look back at 52, which I am now, and go, ‘I responded to a lot of invitations, but what does that add up to?’ How can I find myself in all of these various responses and applications of art?”

Across 900 pages, the monograph spans over 120 projects, accompanied by hundreds of images and detailed analysis and commentary on each piece from the artist herself and many of her artistic collaborators, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pharell Williams, and Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye. The book, being a sculptural piece itself, is immersive throughout with the use of foldout sections, cutouts, and visual as well as tangible elements. It experiments with different textures and paper types, with some sections including mirrored and translucent overlays. Devlin took inspiration for the structural element of the book from graphic designer and bookmaker Irma Boom, who she described as being the “goddess of all book design,” with the use of illustrations as “objects.” Daniel Devlin, on the process of designing the book, revealed, “We had to make compromises in order to make it viable, and we had to work out creative solutions. For example, one of the initial ideas was for the first part of the book to feel like a collection of sketchbooks and other material, as if randomly bound together. The way we achieved it was by having alternating signatures made with different papers and sizes, including shorter pages and foldouts as inserts and wraps, and adding tip-ins. Es had to write and plan the book following these sequences, and these restrictions made the book more exciting.”

Most recently, Es has been working with the likes of The Weeknd and Beyonce on their grand world tours, with the elaborate and visually spectacular set design that she is famed for. Each set she works on is unique to the subject; however, she often experiments with the medium of light, incorporating this into the design itself. In her set design for the 2023 football play by James Graham, ‘Dear England’, which Es described as an ‘exploration of Britishness’, she states that she sat in the Olivier Theatre, where the play was set, debating how to create ‘pressure, tension, and focus.’ Using two parallel rings of light, alongside the mechanic of doorways on moving platforms to ‘provide a playground’, the scene of a training ground and a locker room was conjured in a small space, purely through the mediums of light and movement. Alongside her stage and set design, Devlin has found success in the creation of installations and sculptures, notably the “Come Home Again” installation at The Tate Modern in late 2022. The dome-shaped sculpture showcased hundreds of hand-drawn sketches of the endangered species of the capital, coming together in one final display of light and art. Despite being a boundary-pushing artist who creates elaborate visuals, Es’ work is grounded in activism and a belief in the sustainability of art. “We’re all asking ourselves, in what way can what I’ve learned to practice be of use?” With Come Home Again, Es stated she wanted “Londoners to sing,” specifically those of nature. After all, “there are 15,000 species of Londoners, of which only one is you.”

Her work is often categorised as “genre-defying” as a result of her multifaceted 30-year career, including the lengthy 7-year creation of the monograph. Es joked, reminiscing on school days: “When I was a child, my teachers said to me, ‘you will never settle on anything because you want to do too many things’”. But time and an assembly of artistic projects disproved this. As stated by her client and collaborator, Abel Tesfaye ‘The Weeknd’ “With Es, there’s no ‘no’”. This attitude characterises her career. “Nothing is ever really an obstacle, everything is an opportunity to be more imaginative,” Es says.

Dorothea Von Hantelmann, artistic collaborator and contributor to the monograph, speaks on this, expressing that Es explores art “beyond the separation of disciplines and the idiosyncratic product of an individual. Her work is very inspiring and powerful: connecting the fields of art, architecture, and design in creating immersive, impactful experiences and, at the same time, in addressing the mass audiences of some of the biggest pop stars of our time.” Daniel Devlin adds, “There is nothing perfunctory in her work, she pushes the boundaries and limits of what’s possible.”

Es expresses a desire to be more independent in her practice as she elaborates on what comes next, saying, “The book is a sewing up of the current studio, which will move… I want to walk into a room and not know what I’m going to make and have no deliverable; no one waiting to know what it is. That’s the next chapter.”

In the past, Es famously proclaimed that she’s always sought to “fill the void with art,” which she has since amended by saying a void cannot be filled. Instead, she is learning to embrace it and embroider around it through her work, which is visually represented through her placement in the centre of the sphere, or “void,” on the cover of the monograph. There is no doubt that the creative world will be waiting with bated breath to see the next stitch to be threaded into the immense career of Es Devlin.

Cover Photo by Jason Ardizzone-West. All Images Courtesy of Es Devlin.