Artist and stage designer Es Devlin was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to design in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in October. She was awarded an OBE in 2015.

Devlin is known for her large scale public art installations, often inspired by nature, which include the Forest for Change – when she filled the courtyard of London’s Somerset House with trees – and indoor forest Conference of the Trees, created for the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, UK.

She also created the mirrored maze-like installation Forest of Us for the inaugural exhibition at Superblue Miami, and was responsible for the closing ceremony at the London 2012 Olympics and the opening ceremony at the Rio 2016 Olympics, as well the British Pavilion at the Dubai 2020 Expo.

Devlin began her career in the theatre, after studying Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London, and has created catwalk shows for designers including Louis Vuitton and stage sets for Kanye West, Beyonce and U2.

Her most recent work, called Come Home Again, saw Devlin create a large scale illuminated sculpture to highlight the 243 species on London’s priority conservation list – moths, birds, beetles, wildflowers, fish and fungi. Created in collaboration with Cartier, a St Pauls Cathedral-inspired pavilion featured Devlin’s line drawings of the endangered animals on the list and was showcased outside the Tate Modern and opposite St Pauls Cathedral.

Each evening at sunset, an interpretation of Choral Evensong was performed within the illuminated sculpture by London-based choral groups, combined with the calls of native birds, bats, and insects. The installation was on show in the Tate Modern Garden.

“A dome originally meant a home,” said Devlin, speaking about the Come Home Again sculpture. “The work invites us to see, hear, and feel our home, our city as an interconnected web of species and cultures, to learn and remember the names and sing those under threat into continued existence. The work echoes the invitation invoked by the 92-year-old climate activist Joanna Macy: “Now it can dawn on us: we are the world knowing itself. As we relinquish our isolation, we come home again... We come home to our mutual belonging.”