While New York City is aglow with many state-of-the-art public installations every holiday season, one piece stands head and shoulders above the rest this year: Es Devlin’s illuminated revolving sculpture, Your Voices, which has just been unveiled at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Commissioned by champagne house Moët & Chandon, Your Voices is situated on Josie Robertson Plaza, the public square that serves as a gateway to the Lincoln Center’s constituent indoor performance venues, including the Metropolitan Opera House. Stretched among the sculpture’s structural arcs are 700 glowing cords, representing the 700 languages currently spoken in New York City – the most linguistically diverse place on the planet.
Es Devlin, Your Voices, installation view at the Lincoln Center, New York
An accompanying soundscape, created by Polyphonia, weaves together some of these languages, from Algerian Arabic, Alsatian, Azeri and Ashanti to Zapotec, Zarma and Zulu, all citing a memorable line from EM Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End: ‘Only connect, and live in fragments no longer.’
‘The work responds to anthropologist Wade Davis’ observation, “Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an entire ecosystem of spiritual possibilities,”’ says Devlin, who previously explored the theme of linguistic diversity in her installation for the Tate Modern Garden in London, titled Come Home Again.
Es Devlin pictured with Your Voices at the Lincoln Center, New York
She continues, ‘The viewer’s perspective is spliced and framed by the shifting strands of the sculpture as it turns, evoking the way our perspectives are enriched and shaped by experiencing the linguistic structures and identities of others.’
Visitors to Your Voices are encouraged to learn about the work of the Endangered Language Alliance, a non-profit documenting and protecting Indigenous, minority and endangered languages in New York City and beyond, which collaborated on Devlin’s piece.
Es Devlin, Your Voices, installation view at the Lincoln Center, New York
As with Devlin’s London installation, Your Voices will play host to multilingual choral performances over the course of its display. The featured choral groups, ranging from Ukrainian Village Voices to the Harlem Japanese Gospel Choir, have been selected by the Lincoln Center for their unique voices and languages. Performances, which are free and open to the public, take place every Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening at 6pm, until and including 18 December 2022.
Beyond inviting viewers to consider the cultural, historical and biological knowledge that exists in languages, Your Voices is a celebration of human connection and an expression of generosity – values that are important in all seasons, but resonate particularly at this time of the year.
The performance calendar for Your Voices (on view until 18 December 2022) can be accessed at lincolncenter.org. Tickets are not required and admission is first-come, first-served.
Es Devlin, Your Voices, installation view at the Lincoln Center, New York
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