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Es Devlin

Artist and stage designer

Es Devlin

Es Devlin is an artist and designer, known for creating large-scale performative sculptures and environments that fuse music, language and light.

Memory Palace (Pitzhanger Manor, London 2019) mapped a history of shifts in human perspective over 73 millennia.

Mirrormaze (Peckham, London 2016), explored identity through reflective labyrinthine geometries.

Her fluorescent red Fifth Lion roared AI-generated collective poetry to crowds in London’s Trafalgar square in September 2018.

Singing Tree, a collective choral installation at the V&A, London merged machine-learning with sound and light in 2017.

Devlin collaborated with theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli on an interpretation of The Order of Time read by Benedict Cumberbatch in 2018.

She has conceived stage sculptures with Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and U2 as well as two decades of opera, drama and dance worldwide.

Her practice was the subject of the Netflix documentary series abstract: The Art of Design, and she has been named Artistic Director of the 2020 London Design Biennale.

Devlin has been awarded the London Design Medal, three Olivier Awards, a University of Kent Doctorate and a UAL Fellowship. She has been named RSA Royal Designer for Industry and was made OBE in 2015.

Devlin spoke at Ted2019 on sculpting music, transience and technology.

She designed the London Olympic closing ceremony in 2012, the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympic games, and is designing the UK Pavilion at Expo 2021 Dubai. The Poempavilion will continue the work in ai-generated collective poetry first conceived with Hans Ulrich Obrist at The Serpentine Gallery in London in 2017.