Es Devlin’s first European retrospective looks back at thirty years of projects, from theatre to stadiums and large-scale installations
On 2 October, London’s Design Museum opens Es Devlin: Other Worlds, the first European retrospective dedicated to the British artist, stage designer and designer, born in 1971. Thirty years of work are presented through installations, films, drawings, photographs, objects and more than thirty models, alongside the largest selection of her archive ever shown to the public. The exhibition traces a journey that begins in theatre, where Devlin started out working on a small scale, and extends to stadiums, museums and large-scale public installations. Along the way are stage designs for Beyoncé, U2 and Kanye West, the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show and projects created for institutions such as the V&A and Tate Modern. Her work is difficult to confine to a single discipline, having brought together stage design, art, sculpture, music, architecture and light over the years. It is precisely this cross-disciplinary dimension that the Design Museum aims to explore with Other Worlds.
Model segments of ‘Mirror Maze’ by Es Devlin, featuring in Es Devlin - Other Worlds at the Design Museum. Photo Richard Round-Turner © the Design Museum
The Italian public knows her well. During Milan Design Week 2025, Library of Light transformed the Courtyard of Honour at the Pinacoteca di Brera into a circular library 18 metres in diameter, with more than 3,000 books arranged on illuminated shelves, slowly rotating on its axis. And in these very days, Devlin is back in Italy, in Venice, as artistic director of Homo Faber 2026: An Island of Light, at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini until 30 September, brings together more than 500 artisans from over 70 countries in a journey built around the relationship between light, materials and craftsmanship.
In London, meanwhile, Devlin herself will open up her archive. “I am moving my studio and practically my entire 30-year archive into the Design Museum for this show,” she says. “It’s an immense privilege to have this opportunity to share my working process and practice with visitors and to create a new large-scale installation.” And the exhibition begins precisely where those projects take shape: a recreation of her South London studio, with shelves filled with books, objects and maquettes, and her desk covered with drawings, paints and tools. A projection-mapped film narrated by Devlin herself then introduces the projects that originated in that space. At the heart of the archive is 30-Year Desk, a new installation of concentric desks bringing together hundreds of drawings, photographs, objects and documents, many of which have never been shown before. Alongside them, more than thirty models trace a wide range of projects: from The Lehman Trilogy to Forest of Us, from the London Olympics to the Super Bowl, and the large kinetic sculptures designed for music tours.
Ideas to Forms by Es Devlin, featuring in Es Devlin - Other Worlds at the Design Museum. Photo Richard Round-Turner © the Design Museum
Also returning is Come Home Again, the installation first presented outside Tate Modern in 2022 and now reimagined for the museum, while Archive Unboxed brings together sketches, paintings, collages, diaries and prints dating back to her school, university and art college years. Materials that make it possible to follow not only the finished projects, but above all how the artist comes to create them.
Portrait of Es Devlin at the Design Museum, 2026_David Parry for the Design Museum
Tag: Exhibitions Mostre London Design Museum News
© Fuorisalone.it — All rights reserved. — Published on 28 September 2026
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