Es Devlin’s work has long been concerned with how people experience space together. Her installations and stage designs use architecture, light and sound to shift audiences from passive observers into active participants. That approach comes into focus in her first solo exhibition in Korea.
“3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again” is now showing at FUTURA SEOUL in Bukchon, bringing together more than three decades of Devlin’s work. The exhibition remains on view until January 17, 2027, with drawings, sculptures, films, books, sound works and light installations spread throughout the space.
Instead of following a conventional retrospective format, the exhibition asks visitors to move through a series of environments and engage with the work in different ways.
From Books to Mirrors
The experience begins with “Infinite Library,” a room where Devlin’s drawings and films appear across shelves of upside-down books. The installation then leads into “Mirror Maze,” which uses reflective glass to blur the boundaries between the artwork and the person standing inside it.
Another installation, “Line of Light,” came from an everyday observation. Devlin once woke to find a thin line of light entering her room. At FUTURA SEOUL, that small moment has been developed into a work that links the light within the gallery to the landscape outside.
Upstairs, visitors encounter “Screenshare,” which draws from the hundreds of sketchbooks Devlin has kept throughout her career. Her drawings, notes and unfinished ideas are brought together as a large-scale moving image, giving the audience a look into the thinking behind her wider practice.
A New Take on “Come Home Again”
At the centre of the exhibition is a new version of “Come Home Again.”
The work began with Devlin’s encounters with endangered species in London. For the Seoul exhibition, its scope has widened to include animals and plants connected to both London and Seoul.
Drawing, recorded voices, and choral sounds come together in the installation, shifting the conversation about presence away from people alone and towards other forms of life that share the environments around us.
Visitors also become contributors through “Collective Portrait.” Sitting opposite someone they may not know, participants draw each other at a shared table. Once completed, the portraits are left in the exhibition, gradually building into a record of the people who have passed through the space.
More Than a Retrospective
The different works give the 3rd Poem a sense of movement rather than presenting Devlin’s career as a simple chronological survey.
People can read, listen, watch, draw or spend time inside the installations. Some works change as visitors interact with them, while others encourage a quieter form of observation.
That emphasis on shared experience is ultimately what connects the exhibition’s many parts. For a short period, strangers occupy the same rooms, encounter the same images and sounds, and leave behind traces of their own presence.
“3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again” is on view at FUTURA SEOUL through January 17, 2027.
FUTURA SEOUL
61 Bukchon-ro
Jongno District, Seoul
South Korea
