Skip to content

Abigail DeVille

Back
Abigail DeVille - Artists - Eric Firestone Gallery

B. 1981 NEW YORK, NY

Abigail DeVille (b. 1981) is an artist working in sculpture, mixed-media, and site-specific installation based in New York City. DeVille received an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations designed to bring attention to these forgotten stories, such as with the sculpture she built on the site of a former African American burial ground in Harlem.

DeVille often works with objects and materials sourced from the area surrounding the exhibition site, and her theatrical aesthetic embodies the phrase, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” Though collected objects are essential to her installations, DeVille’s priority is the stories her installations can tell. DeVille’s family roots in New York go back at least two generations; her interest in the city, and her work about it, is both personal and political.

Abigail DeVille - Artists - Eric Firestone Gallery

Abigail DeVille | Time After Time, 2022 | z-rack, wire, nylon paracord, accumulated debris, army cot, anatomical ribs, skulls, scales, clock, radios

Abigail DeVille’s most recent solo exhibition was Light of Freedom, organized by Madison Square Park Conservancy (2020–21), and traveled to the Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Conservancy (2020–21), and traveled to the Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2021) and the Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2021–22). Recent sculpture by DeVille was on view at the Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH as part of Abigail DeVille: Dream Keeper. Other commissions and solo museum shows include The American Future, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland (2018–19); Lift Every Voice and Sing (amerikanskie gorki) at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2017–2018); Empire State Works in Progress (2017) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; No Space Hidden (Shelter) at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2017–2018), and Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars at The Contemporary, Baltimore (2016).

Recent group shows have been held at the Swiss Institute, New York (2022); Pioneer Works, Brooklyn (2021); Wave Hill, Bronx (2019); National Museum of Women in Arts, Washington, DC (2018); Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens (2016), Sculpture Center, Queens (2014), El Museo del Barrio, New York (2011, 2014), CAMH, Houston (2014); The Bronx Museum of the Arts; (2013), The 55th Venice Biennale (2013), The Studio Museum in Harlem (2012, 2014); ICA, Philadelphia (2012); New Museum (2012); and the Stedelijk Museum (2011).

DeVille was a 2018 United States Artists Fellow, 2017–2018 Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome, 2015 Creative Capital grantee, 2014–15 fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and 2012 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient. DeVille teaches in the Interdisciplinary Sculpture Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and at Yale School of Art.

DeVille's work is in prominent collections, including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx; Centre National des Arts Plastiques (Cnap), Paris; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Kaviar Factory, Henningsvaer; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (MBMA), Memphis; Pinault Collection; and The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York).

Download PDF
Back To Top