‘We can all coexist’: artist Es Devlin uses selfies to unite UK in portrait of a nation

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, ‘We can all coexist’: artist Es Devlin uses selfies to unite UK in portrait of a nation, A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery aims to bring people together in increasingly atomised country Can a collective portrait of Britain hold together a country that feels as if it is splintering apart? That is the quietly radical hope behind Es Devlin’s new installation at the National Portrait Gallery: a living portrait comprised not of monarchs, politicians or celebrities but of thousands of ordinary faces drifting slowly into and out of one another. Created in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab, A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery invites people across the UK to upload a selfie, which is then transformed into a portrait rendered in Devlin’s smoky charcoal-and-chalk style before joining a constantly evolving and revolving carousel of portraits projected on to a framed screen. Continue reading…

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Technology file for readers following technology, science, product policy, markets, infrastructure, and the public consequences of innovation. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-05-14T13:56:53+00:00.

What to watch

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Source

Primary source: ‘We can all coexist’: artist Es Devlin uses selfies to unite UK in portrait of a nation via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.