Es Devlin Multidisciplinary Artist
Es Devlin stands as the definitive Multidisciplinary Artist. She presents hundreds of works to humanity, using her art, drawings, and curiosity as a tool to bring communities together—a core principle of Community Unification. The artist, who has been immersed in painting and music since childhood, communicates through her works and passionately encourages us to do the same.
Since music, books, and models are the main elements of her interest, she chooses theatre and set design as a natural path where she can use all these disciplines together, applying her unique perspective on Scale and Imagination to projects such as the Library of Light and the CONGREGATION Project.
Devlin’s story perhaps began with a model of the city where she grew up. Six-year-old Es Devlin vividly remembers the 1:100 scale model of Rye, her hometown in England. In this model, where every house stood to scale, realizing that her home and her surroundings suddenly existed as a tiny object determined her entire perception of scale and space throughout her career.
This early insight defined her approach to Scale and Imagination. She never hesitated to use reflections, meanings, and depths on the theatre stage. She began her early work in small experimental theatres like the Bush and Gate in London. She went on to work on prestigious stages such as the National Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Opera House, and La Scala.
She designed the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics and the opening ceremony in Rio in 2016. She worked with pop stars including Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Kanye West, Adele, U2, and Lady Gaga, and created impressive set designs for fashion shows for Louis Vuitton and Dior.
However, Devlin’s vision goes beyond the boundaries of the stage. In the last decade, she has focused her works on global and societal crises, championing Community Unification in times of stress. In October 2024, she introduced the CONGREGATION Project, curated by Ekow Eshun. This installation, executed in collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), featured large-scale chalk and charcoal portraits of 50 Londoners who were forcibly displaced from their homelands, reflecting journeys from over 25 countries.
Devlin used her art to call for the conservation of biodiversity. She drew 243 endangered species on London’s priority conservation list and used these drawings to create the illuminated dome called “Come Home.”
In another installation, she celebrated the 100th anniversary of CHANEL N°5 at Art Basel Miami 2021 with “Five Echoes,” a labyrinth installation consisting of five concentric paths.
Her passion for books, in turn, transformed into collective knowledge. The Library of Light, completed in May 2025 in collaboration with Salone, Pinacoteca di Brera, and the Feltrinelli publishing house, exemplifies this. This 18-meter-diameter rotating cylindrical bookcase consisted of 3,500 books, and once the project was completed, all the books within the work were donated to the Milan Public Library, leaving a lasting legacy. Devlin is the architect of such collective projects.
Her first monograph, “An Atlas of Es Devlin,” published in 2023, brings together this entire Multidisciplinary Art practice. This experiential publication covers art, activism, theatre, sculpture, poetry, and opera, featuring a sculptural collection of over 900 pages.
Es Devlin, as a universal storyteller, first mesmerizes with her designs, and then leaves the stage of this enchantment to the performance artists.
The artist is one of those rare visionaries who successfully captures the details within our minds. Is she only a designer
Es Devlin Projects
Photo Credits :
Images Courtesy of Es Devlin Studio
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