An MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient.
Image: "Congregation," Es Devlin work in progress. Photo by Daniel Devlin.
An MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient.
Image: "Congregation," Es Devlin work in progress. Photo by Daniel Devlin.
An MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient.
Image: "Congregation," Es Devlin work in progress. Photo by Daniel Devlin.
An MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient.
Image: "Congregation," Es Devlin work in progress. Photo by Daniel Devlin.
An MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient.
An MIT-wide community drawing project inspired by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recipient.
MIT Face to Face is a collective event and pop-up exhibition inspired by Congregation, an art project and exhibition created by Es Devlin, the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts recipient.
The various silos in the MIT community can separate us and keep us from knowing one another. In MIT Face to Face sessions, strangers from all areas of MIT’s community will be paired to draw one another and exchange their stories, creating a collective portrait of the Institute. In this project, drawing is used as a means to connect rather than an attempt to create a polished outcome. No matter your experience with drawing, the marks on the page will be a trace of the encounter.
Workshop participants may choose to have their drawings featured in a pop-up group exhibition in Tull Hall in the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building during Es Devlin's visit to campus April 28–May 1, 2025.
Watch a video about Congregation
Free and open to the MIT Community; advance registration is required as these interactive sessions have limited capacity.
Thurs, Feb 27 // 3:30-5:30pm Facilitated by Seth Riskin in the MIT Museum Studio (10-150)
Tues, Mar 4 // 3:30-5:30pm Facilitated by Seth Riskin in the MIT Museum Studio (10-150)
Fri, Mar 7 // 5:00-7:00pm Facilitated by Sara Brown in the MIT W20 Arts Studios (W20-425)
Mon, Mar 10 // 5:30-7:30pm Facilitated by Sloan Aulgur in the SA+P Long Lounge (7-429)
Wed, Mar 12 // 4:00-6:00pm Facilitated by Sarah Hirzel in the MIT W20 Arts Studios (W20-425)
Mon, Mar 17 // 5:30-7:30pm Facilitated by Sloan Aulgur in the SA+P Long Lounge (7-429)
Wed, Mar 19 // 4:00-6:00pm Facilitated by Marla McLeod in the W97 Design Studio (W97-261)
Mon, Mar 24 // 5:30-7:30pm Facilitated by Sloan Aulgur in the SA+P Long Lounge (7-429)
Mon, Mar 31 // 4:00-6:00pm Facilitated by Sharon Lacey in the W97 Design Studio (W97-261)
Flash Portrait Session at MIT Museum After Dark
Thur, Mar 13 // 10 minute sessions between 6:00–9:00pm
Facilitated by Sara Brown, Verose Agbing, and Yiner Xu
Participants will be paired with a stranger to carefully observe and draw them without looking at their paper or lifting their pencil.
Artist Talk: Es Devlin in Conversation with Paola Antonelli
Thur, May 1 // 5:00–6:30pm in the MIT 10-250 Lecture Hall
A conversation between artist and designer Es Devlin and architect and curator Paola Antonelli about Devlin’s wide-ranging artistic practice. Free and open to the public, but registration is required due to space limitations.
Verose Agbing is a biological engineering and theater arts undergraduate student at MIT with a strong focus on applying computational methods to biological problems and set/costume design. An aspiring industry-bound bioengineer leveraging machine learning alongside extensive wet lab expertise, Agbing is experienced in managing independent research projects with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and structural biology, applying analytical techniques to solve novel problems in drug discovery, and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to bridge computation with application in the lab space. In theater, Agbing participated as an assistant in the productions of Aristotle Thinks Again and Circlusion in set design and the MIT production of La Vida Es Suñeo/Life is a Dream in costumes. Currently working under the direction of Sara Brown and Chloe Chapin as a set and costume assistant in the production of Antigonick, Agbing is collaborating under Sara Brown in the Artfinity festival for art workshops and installations. Agbing gained essential skills in teamwork, problem-solving, and creativity that enhance engineering and research pursuits and is committed to driving impactful theater and scientific advancements, excelling in dynamic, multifaceted roles that prioritize continuous learning and innovation.
Sloan Aulgur is a multimedia designer interested in performance and the intimate individual experience felt within a crowd. She is interested in surreal interiors, live performances, and affect produced through story-telling spaces. Her work has prioritized both small interactive details and expansive experiential space, testing lighting and material concepts through performative pieces and time-based productions. Aulgur is currently a lead researcher for Matter Design, and has worked as designer for various firms, including Marlon Blackwell Architects, Gensler Seattle, and Somewhere Studio.
Biography: MIT Architecture Department
Website: sloanaulgur.com
Sara Brown is a set designer and associate professor in Music and Theater Arts. Brown’s designs have been seen at the BAM Next Wave Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. Through her teaching, she encourages students to see stage environments as a means to shape action and provide visual context for performance.
Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: sarabdesign.com
Sarah Hirzel is the maker in residence at the curator for the MIT W20 Arts Studios and Wiesner Student Art Gallery. An artist, teacher, and gardener who explores how landscapes in urban and suburban spaces are shaped by human values, Hirzel works in traditional drawing media and with textiles, printmaking, and photography. She has taught at Wesleyan University, Fordham University, and Stern College of Yeshiva University. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Art in the Department of Painting and Printmaking, and Wesleyan University.
Website: sarahhirzel.com
Sharon Lacey is a painter who lives and works in Somerville, MA. She studied art and art history at the New York Academy of Art (MFA, 2001) and the University of London (MA, 2011). Her art training has focused on traditional materials and techniques for painting and contemporary figuration. Recent exhibitions include Do Not Swallow at Safehouse, London (2023) and Empire of Dirt at 100 Chestnut Project Space, Somerville (2024).
Lacey has been a resident artist at The Studios at Mass MoCA (USA, 2019), Arteles Creative Center (Finland, 2013), Contemporary Art Center Woodside (USA, 2012), and Can Serrat (Spain, 2010). She has received grants from the Council for the Arts at MIT (2014) and the Somerville Arts Council (2013, 2016, 2022). Since 2019, she has been a lecturer in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts section where she teaches Drawing for Designers.
Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: sharonlacey.com
Marla L. McLeod (b. 1981, San Bernardino, CA) explores black identity and social constructs through her portrait paintings, textiles, and sculptures. Her MFA thesis made her a featured artist on the MFA, Boston 2020 Takeover Fridays social media project, the 2020 Area Code Art Fair StoreFronts Projects, and one of the Boston Globes “5 Outstanding Art School Grads.” In 2019 she received the Will and Elena Barnet Painting Award, a Tisch Library Graduate Research Fellowship, and presented at Black Portraitures, NYU.
Website: marlamcleod.com
Yiner Xu is an MFA candidate at MassArts’ Dynamic Media Institute with cross-registration in MIT Theater Arts and MIT Media Lab. Xu is an illustrator and visual designer who explores themes of nature in scientific, narrative, and surrealistic aspects, combining bright colors and detailed textures. Xu has a keen understanding of immersive audio-visual experience design, interactive storytelling, and digital communication in the field of new media.
Website: yinerxuart.com
The Council’s programs provide resources to support artistic expression and engagement for the MIT community and are funded by the annual contributions of its members.
MIT Music & Theater Arts invites its students to explore artistic disciplines as cultural, intellectual, and personal avenues of inquiry, discovery, and innovation.
MIT is committed to providing an environment that is accessible to individuals with disabilities. View the Accessibility Web App, designed for the MIT community to view accessible routes across the MIT campus. Please contact the event organizer directly for specific accessibility information or to discuss your needs.
Artist Es Devlin (b. 1971, London, England) views an audience as a temporary society and often invites public participation in communal choral works. Her canvas ranges from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, V&A, Serpentine, Imperial War Museum and Lincoln Center to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as Olympic Games ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for large-scale stadium concerts.
Devlin is the subject of a major monographic book, An Atlas of Es Devlin, described by Thames & Hudson as their most intricate and sculptural publication to date, and a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.
In 2020, Devlin became the first female architect of the UK Pavilion at a World Expo, conceiving a building which used AI to co-author poetry with visitors on its 20-meter diameter facade. Her practice was the subject of the 2015 Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design. She is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and the University of the Arts London, and is a Royal Designer for Industry at the Royal Society of Arts. She has been awarded the London Design Medal, three Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, an Ivor Novello Award, doctorates from the University of Bristol and the University of Kent and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Read more about Es Devlin
“For the first forty-five minutes I was drawing a stranger: a portrait of the assumptions I inevitably overlay, my own perspectives and biases. Each portrait sitter is a co-author of the work. Each is depicted holding a box containing a projected animated sequence which they have invited me to envisage. The co-authors constitute a majestic London congregation whose roots extend across the globe. Their voices are included in an accompanying sound sequence composed by polyphonia. With poetry by the Kinshasa-born poet JJ Bola (also one of the portrait co-authors) and extracts from Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons. It culminates in a reworking of Anton Bruckner’s Sacred Motet Locus Iste (this place) which fuses the voices of the London Bulgarian Choir, the South African Cultural Gospel Choir UK, Genesis Sixteen, and the Choir of King's College London.”
~ Es Devlin
More about Congregation
MIT Face to Face is co-presented by the MIT Theater Arts and the Office of the Arts as part of Es Devlin’s Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT campus residency. The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT is presented by the Council for the Arts at MIT.
