Faena Art Celebrates a Decade in Miami Beach with Es Devlin’s “Library of Us”

Source: Faena Art

Reported By: Caroline Dalal

To celebrate ten years of shaping Miami Beach’s cultural landscape, Faena Art is presenting its most ambitious commission to date during Miami Art Week 2025: Library of Us, a monumental kinetic installation by acclaimed British artist Es Devlin. Running December 2–7, the exhibition will transform the Faena District into a living, breathing theater of reflection and encounter, uniting art, literature, and community beneath the South Florida sky.

Supported by Chase Sapphire Reserve, the program extends across Faena Beach, Faena Cathedral, and the Faena Project Room, each space reimagined as a sanctuary for language and imagination. Devlin’s work, renowned for its immersive scale and participatory spirit, will anchor the week’s festivities with a series of interconnected installations that explore how reading, like art, builds a temporary society of shared ideas.

At the heart of the commission stands Library of Us, a 50-foot-wide rotating triangular bookshelf containing 2,500 books that have most influenced Devlin’s philosophy, life, and artistic practice. Suspended within a circular reflecting pool, the luminous structure acts as a compass of knowledge, slowly revolving as visitors read and rotate around it.

Each day, Devlin personally sets the collective reading table with annotated books and underlined passages. Inside the circular space, stools revolve in sync with the sculpture, allowing readers to encounter new texts, and new people, with every turn. On the outer edge, static seating invites quiet reflection.

One of the installation’s shelves doubles as a 30-foot LED subtitle screen, displaying illuminated excerpts from 250 books. The texts, accompanied by Devlin’s recorded narration and compositions by British ensemble Polyphonia, envelop visitors in an audiovisual experience that captures the intimacy of reading within a shared, public setting.

The artwork builds upon Devlin’s Library of Light, first unveiled at Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera earlier this year, and draws inspiration from thinkers including Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, and James Baldwin, each of whom viewed books as mirrors of human connection.

Devlin’s presentation continues across two additional Faena spaces. Inside the Faena Cathedral, her installation Reading Room extends the conversation into an intimate environment of contemplation, while Tracing Time at the Faena Project Room presents a collection of the artist’s drawings and paintings on glass, paper, and television screens. Together, the works form a rare, large-scale survey of Devlin’s multidisciplinary practice.

The project also carries a civic resonance. All books featured in Library of Us have been donated by Penguin Random House and will be gifted to public libraries and schools across Miami after Art Week, a gesture that extends the installation’s message beyond the beach and into the community.

Throughout the week, Faena Art will host complementary programming, including an Artist Talk with Es Devlin at Faena Theater, a private “An Edible Library” dinner, and a series of collective readings, performances, and workshops with local artists. Guests staying at the Faena Hotel will discover select annotated books from the installation placed in their rooms, turning the act of reading into a personal encounter with the artist’s world.

For Alan Faena, the tenth anniversary marks a meaningful milestone in Faena Art’s evolution.

Faena Art’s ongoing commitment to accessible, site-specific installations continues to shape Miami’s identity as a global art capital. Alongside Devlin’s installations, this year’s programming also includes “The Library is Open”, a new installation by Miami-based artist Pepe Mar, presented in collaboration with the City of Miami Beach’s No Vacancy program.

Beyond Art Week, Faena Art remains a cornerstone of Miami’s creative community, supporting artists through the Faena Prize for the Arts, the Faena Project Room, and the Faena Forum, initiatives that nurture dialogue between local and international artists while inviting the public to engage directly with art in their everyday lives.

Renowned for her large-scale installations and collaborations across art, theater, and music, Es Devlin approaches audiences as “temporary societies”—moments of shared imagination. Her works have included Come Home Again at Tate Modern, Your Voices at Lincoln Center, Forest of Us at Superblue Miami, and the UK Pavilion at Expo 2021. Her installations have graced Olympic ceremonies, the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and opera stages around the world.

Through Library of Us, Devlin returns to Miami with a project that reflects both her global reach and her deep connection to the city’s artistic fabric. As Faena Art celebrates its first decade, her installation stands as both tribute and transformation, a luminous symbol of what art can achieve when it bridges imagination and community.

Faena Art’s “Library of Us” by Es Devlin

Free and open to the public December 2–7, 2025 | 1:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.
Faena Beach, Faena Cathedral, and Faena Project Room, Miami Beach