The first solo exhibition in Korea by internationally acclaimed stage designer and visual artist Es Devlin (b. 1971), 《3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again》, is on view at FUTURA SEOUL in Bukchon from August 20, 2026, through January 17, 2027.
 
The exhibition marks the third “poem” in 100 POEMS, FUTURA SEOUL’s long-term exhibition program conceived to bring together 100 exhibitions. The program approaches each exhibition as a “poem” and each participating artist as the “poet” who writes it, presenting immersive spatial experiences that address questions of our time.
 
While the preceding exhibitions by Refik Anadol and Anthony McCall explored how reality is perceived through data, light, and the viewer’s body, this exhibition focuses on the relationship between space and audience that Devlin has developed over the past three decades.
 
Devlin began her career designing sets for opera and theater. She has since created stages for internationally renowned musicians, including Beyoncé, Adele, and U2, as well as major public projects such as the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games and the UK Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai.

Since 2016, Devlin has expanded the spatial language developed through stage design into exhibition spaces and public settings. Drawing on this trajectory, the exhibition brings together books, drawings, installation, light, sound, and audience participation within the context of contemporary art.
 
 
 
A Space Shaped by Its Audience
 
Devlin describes an audience sharing the same place and time as a “Temporary Society.” The term refers to the brief community that takes shape when strangers experience the same performance or artwork together.
 
In Devlin’s practice, space is not simply a backdrop for an artwork. It becomes a medium that organizes the viewer’s gaze and movement. While a performance stage directs thousands of spectators toward a single scene, her exhibition spaces invite visitors to move through the work and discover relationships between themselves, others, and their surroundings.

Screenshare transforms sketches and working materials accumulated over more than three decades into a monumental paper screen. Drawings, notes, and traces of collaborative processes unfold through a projected film. At the end of the screening, each visitor is invited to take home one of the sketches that forms the screen.
 
As the exhibition progresses, the single screen is gradually dismantled and dispersed into fragments that enter the everyday lives of its visitors. By sharing traces of her creative process, Devlin presents the artwork not as a fixed object but as an evolving relationship that continues to change and circulate among people.

Passing Through Books
 
The exhibition begins with Infinite Library. Used books are shelved with their spines turned inward, while Devlin’s drawings and moving images are projected across their exposed page edges. Voices speaking about books and reading fill the space. As the film unfolds, the central section of the bookshelves opens, allowing visitors to pass through the library and enter the next work.
 
The experience of encountering other people’s thoughts and lives through reading is thus transformed into the physical experience of moving through an architectural space.

Spaces Made by Mirrors and Light
 
In Mirror Maze, multifaceted mirrors covering the walls and ceiling fragment and repeat the visitor’s image in multiple directions. As viewers look at their own reflections, other visitors continually enter their field of vision.
 
The mirror becomes both a device for seeing oneself and a medium through which the presence of others is recognized. Previously used in Devlin’s stage designs to expand space and direct attention, the mirror is transformed here into an installation that reveals the relationship between the self and those who share the same space.
 
Installed in a space opening toward the garden, Line of Light originated from the artist’s experience of waking and perceiving a single line of light before becoming aware of the room around her. Composed of strobe lighting, sound, and water, the work brings together artificial light inside the exhibition space and natural light beyond the windows within a single landscape.
 
Light is reflected on the surface of the water, while daylight changes over time. As FUTURA SEOUL’s architecture, garden, and the movement of visitors intersect with the installation, the space becomes an environment that continually shifts with light and time.

A Home Shared by Humans and Other Living Beings
 
The exhibition’s central work, Come Home Again, is a new Seoul iteration of Devlin’s 2022 public art project of the same title, first presented outside Tate Modern in London.
 
The original London work combined Devlin’s drawings of 243 endangered species with the voices of a diaspora choir. For the Seoul exhibition, species living in the city have been added to those depicted in the London version, bringing the ecologies of the two cities together within a single landscape.

Here, “home” extends beyond a private dwelling to encompass an environment shared by humans and other forms of life. Coming home becomes a process of reconsidering the relationship between humanity and nature. Through drawing, sound, light, and space, the work presents human beings as part of an interconnected ecological environment.
 
At the center of Devlin’s approach to transforming space into art lies a question: How do those gathered in the same space perceive one another and form relationships? Originating on the stage and expanding into exhibition and urban environments, her practice transforms space from a visual scene into a place where visitors encounter others, experience temporary forms of community, and reconsider their relationship with the wider ecological world.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition: 《3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again》
Artist: Es Devlin
Dates: August 20, 2026–January 17, 2027
Venue: FUTURA SEOUL
Address: 61 Bukchon-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul
Website: www.futuraseoul.org