There's a drawing of a hand in Es Devlin's forthcoming memoir An Atlas of Es Devlin, a 900-page survey of her work as an artist. It reaches into space, veins coursing up through the forearm to the fingers, and waits until you register that they're not veins at all, but streets. Roads take the appearance of blood vessels. Highways are tendons, alleys are nerves. This is not, in fact, the anatomy of a hand, but of a place.
“I was trying to reconcile the arterial system with a journey to my English and Gujarati ancestors,” Devlin tells Australia from her home in London. She holds the drawing up to the screen, one of a myriad of sketches that that there is a similarity in the system that governs the location of roads and the bifurcation of arteries. I don't think we should be surprised by that. I think your instinct is there from the minute you're born.”
