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

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. The effect is strangely intimate: faces hover briefly at the surface before slipping away again; strangers fold into strangers; features surface and dissolve. Watching it feels less like looking at images than catching fragments of people as they pass in a crowd. For Devlin, an artist best known for creating the dreamlike visual worlds of Beyoncé, Adele and the closing ceremony of the London Olympics, the work arrives at a moment when Britain feels increasingly atomised by political fury, algorithmic distraction and loneliness. “I am in no way trying to erase the differences between us or suggesting that everyone can agree with each other,” she said. …