Es Devlin stood on Miami Beach and built a compass of the mind—a 20-foot-tall rotating bookshelf holding 2,500 volumes that have shaped who she is. The British artist calls it "Library of Us," and it's an invitation to step onto a slowly turning platform, pick a book that calls to you, and read.
The collection is color-coded into a rainbow gradient, a visual trick that makes the library shimmer like something between a lighthouse and a prayer. Inside are childhood favorites alongside plays Devlin has designed sets for, books she returns to and books she's only read once but couldn't forget. The form itself was inspired by Italian novelist Umberto Eco's idea of libraries as compasses—instruments that point us toward new directions we didn't know existed.
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Devlin reads roughly 300 books a year—the kind of reader who doesn't just consume stories but is consumed by them. On the curved table circling the library, visitors can pick up extra volumes and sit on the benches. An LED screen wraps around the installation, projecting lines from the books themselves, so the words become part of the landscape.
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Start Your News DetoxBut there's something quietly radical happening here. Some of the 2,500 books Devlin selected have been banned from schools and libraries across the country, including in Florida. Margaret Atwood. Octavia Butler. Toni Morrison. Books that disagree with each other, that hold contrasting ideas, that some communities have decided shouldn't exist on certain shelves.
"I couldn't live without them," Devlin told the Miami Herald. "That's something you feel when you see the waters rising on this collection of books that disagree with each other. We must be allowed to hold contrasting ideas together."
When the installation closes, the books will be donated to Miami public schools and libraries—a second life for a collection that began as one artist's personal map of who she became. Visitors to Miami Art Week reported feeling something shift. "I'm blown away. I feel inspired. I feel connected," one told the Associated Press. "And just to know that these are the books that inspired her, it's a gift."
That's what happens when you make the invisible visible—when you take the private act of reading and turn it into a structure anyone can walk through, touch, and recognize themselves in.
