Cover photo: Es Devlin photographed in Es Devlin/ Other Worlds at the Design Museum. Photo Credit David Parry for the Design Museum
«You sort of do need to start without light, to find it». In the Netflix episode of Abstract: The Art of Design dedicated to her work, Es Devlin describes one of the principles that underlies her practice: starting from darkness to understand how light can shape a space, guide the gaze, and transform what appears before the viewer. A British artist and set designer who ranks among the most influential figures in the contemporary art scene, Devlin has collaborated with some of the most iconic artists of recent decades – from Beyoncé to Lady Gaga – spanning theater, opera, concerts, and major events. Thirty years of her work are now on display at the Design Museum in London in “Es Devlin: Other Worlds”, open from October 2, 2026, to April 4, 2027—the first European retrospective dedicated to her work.
Ideas, sketches and stage designs on display
Conceived in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition focuses on the creative process, tracing the path from initial intuition to the finished work. The exhibition begins with a reconstruction of her London studio, filled with books, objects, and models, and continues with Archive Unboxed, the most comprehensive presentation of her personal archive to date: sketches, paintings, collages, diaries, and prints trace her artistic development and the evolution of her most recent projects. At the heart of the exhibition is the 30-Year Desk, a large circular structure designed for the Design Museum. Approximately 5,000 items – including sketches, prototypes, and rotating models – form a three-dimensional chronology of his career. The exhibition ranges from the set design for The Lehman Trilogy – Stefano Massini’s drama about the rise and fall of the Lehman family and American capitalism – to Forest of Us, the immersive installation presented at Superblue Miami in 2021 that draws parallels between the branching of human bronchi and that of trees. Also featured are designs for the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar, and the monumental kinetic structures created for concerts.
Light as a scenographic material
In Devlin’s work, light shapes our perception of space through reflections, projections, openings, and areas of shadow: it can isolate a figure, dissolve a surface, or alter its apparent scale. Darkness thus becomes the starting point of the project, the condition from which forms, volumes, and depths gradually emerge.
It’s clear how the theater has served as a prime testing ground for this exploration, while concerts have allowed her to translate it onto a monumental scale. In Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, directed by Lyndsey Turner at the Donmar Warehouse, a curtain of illuminated rain punctuated the monologues; in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Barbican, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, lighting and projections altered the depth of the monumental Elsinore. In The Lehman Trilogy, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes at the National Theatre, a large glass structure encompassed over a century of history. In concerts, this same visual language shifts in scale and intensity: with Adele, Devlin uses large images, screens, and a curtain of rain to maintain a sense of intimacy even in an arena setting. For Beyoncé’s 2016 Formation World Tour, the Monolith – a massive rotating LED video sculpture – continuously multiplied and recomposed the performer’s image. In projects with Kanye West, from the Yeezus Tour to the suspended platform of the Saint Pablo Tour, the stage space comes to engulf the crowd, transforming it into part of the show.
From endangered species to libraries of light
Following the London itinerary, Come Home Again revisits the installation created in 2022 in front of the Tate Modern. Conceived as a sanctuary dedicated to the endangered species that inhabit London, it brings together hundreds of drawings of animals, insects, and other non-human life forms in a luminous structure that is reconfigured into a new constellation for the exhibition. The images multiply and temporarily shift the viewer’s gaze away from the centrality of the human presence.
The exhibition reaches its peak in the Infinite Library, created specifically for this retrospective. Over two thousand books, arranged by color, rotate above a mirrored platform; some open volumes invite visitors to stop and read, while Es Devlin’s own voice fills the space with texts that have influenced her thinking. Movement and reflection transform the library into a walk-through, ever-changing sculpture. At the end of the exhibition, the books provided by Penguin Random House UK will be donated to local organizations as part of the National Year of Reading 2026.
Infinite Library continues an exploration already evident in Library of Light, installed in the courtyard of the Pinacoteca di Brera during Milan Design Week in 2025. A circular, rotating library surrounded an inclined mirrored surface capable of capturing sunlight and projecting it onto the shaded areas of the courtyard. The sun’s movement continuously transformed the work, establishing a connection between architecture and the natural passage of time.
How do you preserve an ephemeral experience?
The Design Museum’s project thus grapples with the paradox of transposing into the exhibition space an artwork that exists fully within the duration of the performance. Models, drawings, and films convey the genesis of the projects, but the original experience remains tied to the time shared between the performers and the audience: “The things that I create are not the things. They are the time that the people at the show spend in the company of the things.”
The retrospective brings these two dimensions together: on the one hand, the archive, which preserves the creative process; on the other, the installations, which offer visitors a physical and immersive experience of the work. And it is precisely in its transitory nature that the set design perhaps finds its most enduring form. As Devlin observes: “In the end everything is only going to exist in the memories of people.”