This rotating library on Miami Beach is a must-see for Miami Art Week

For her showstopping Miami Art Week exhibitions, renowned British artist Es Devlin drew from childhood memories: reading her favorite books, overflowing the bathtub and nearly drowning in the River Thames.

Her monumental work “Library of Us,” a 50-foot-wide triangular bookshelf holding thousands of books that rotates like a compass needle in a pool of water, invites viewers to contemplate and reconnect with their own memories about reading, knowledge, time and water. The interactive artwork located on the sands of Miami Beach, where visitors are invited to sit and read, was commissioned by nonprofit Faena Art, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

“Library of Us,” along with two other exhibitions by Devlin in the Faena Hotel lobby and nearby Faena Art Project Room, are free and open to the public until Sunday. Devlin, an internationally-acclaimed artist known for creating large scale works, felt a wave of emotions as she reflected on the work during the opening party on Monday. The artwork is meant to spark the sense of urgency people feel when water gets too close to paper, similar to how Devlin’s mother felt when she accidentally overfilled the bathtub as a child.

“I hadn’t realized how moved I would be by seeing the proximity of water and paper in this place on the planet with words, some of which are written by banned authors,” she told the Herald. “I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel.”

“Library of Us” has emerged as a highlight among the many free, publically accessible art installations during Miami Art Week and the centerpiece of Faena Art’s programming for the week. The bookshelf displays 2,500 books — color coordinated to create a rainbow gradient — that have influenced Devlin throughout her life and career. The bookshelf also features an LED screen that displays excerpts and quotes from the books while speakers play an audio recording of Devlin reading the words that appear on-screen.

Devlin explained it was important to her to incorporate Spanish into the artwork given Miami-Dade’s significant Spanish-speaking community. In the audio recording, a Spanish-speaker reads some book excerpts in Spanish, and Ray-ban Meta glasses are also available for visitors to translate text from English to Spanish.

The rotating bookshelf is surrounded by a circular communal reading table where the artist will lay out several of her personal, annotated books each day. The outer part of the table is static, while the inner part rotates with the bookshelf, encouraging viewers to encounter new people as the artwork turns. (The books used in the artwork will be donated to local organizations, libraries and public schools after Art Week.)

“It’s a beautiful interaction, really,” said Nicole Comotti, the Faena Art executive director. “You can sit and enjoy the books and the passages with different people.”

At the exhibition opening, real estate developer and hotelier Alan Faena thanked the Faena Art team and Devlin for their work. “What best way to celebrate [than to] bring the talent of someone so special, so unique, like Es Devlin,” he said.

The combination of books and rising waters is likely to remind South Florida spectators of two local issues: Miami’s incessant flooding and the recent wave of book bans in Florida schools and libraries. As someone who has visited Miami often and whose work “Forest of Us” is on permanent view at Superblue in Allapattah, Devlin found herself reflecting on those themes as well.

Leading up to the exhibition openings, the weather in Miami was so “ferocious” she couldn’t enter the Faena Art Project Room at one point because of severe flooding. “[The weather] is reminding us that it’s in charge,” she said.

And, she added, it just so happened that some of the authors featured in “Library of Us” have been banned, either in Florida or elsewhere. The artwork, which is meant to celebrate different ideas coexisting, certainly lends itself to that conversation, she said.

“I couldn’t live without Margaret Atwood. I couldn’t live without Octavia Butler. I couldn’t live without Toni Morrison. So they’re all there, and they’re not banned here, but they are banned in some places,” she told the Herald. “That’s something you feel when you see the waters rising on this collection of books that disagree with each other. We must be allowed to hold contrasting ideas together.”

Many years of ideas and discussions lead to Devlin’s Art Week exhibitions, Devlin said. In 2016, she noticed that she wasn’t reading books the way she used to as a teenager. She used to read obsessively: as soon as she woke up, on the bus to school, while walking, while eating cereal.

“And then you would be full of grief when you got to the last few pages because you knew that you had to leave the world that somebody wasn’t you had constructed,” she said.

But why didn’t she read like that anymore? “I love my phone. It’s great, but it really f----- up my reading,” Devlin said.

Most of what Devlin read at the time was subtitles while watching movies or operas. “So I thought, ‘What if we could all gather with just a subtitle screen and read together?’” she said.

At the Faena Art Project Room is Devlin’s “Tracing Time,” an exhibition of painted television screens, rotating sculptural works and paper drawings, including an early sketch of “Library of Us.” Much of the pieces in the show involve water, inspired by Devlin’s earliest memory of nearly drowning in the River Thames when she was 3. Across the street, inside the Faena hotel lobby, is Devlin’s installation “Reading Room,” a long bench and bookshelf holding dozens of books for visitors to sit and read together.

Despite the fast-paced chaos of Art Week, Devlin hopes her art will encourage viewers to slow down.

“I hope that they experience time the way they experienced it when they sat in their mother’s lap, and she read to them,” she said.

If you go:

What: “Library of Us” by Es Devlin

Where: Located on Faena Beach, behind Faena Hotel Miami Beach. 3201 Collins Ave, Miami Beach

Info: Additional art by Es Devlin on view inside the Faena Hotel lobby and at Faena Art Project Room, 3420 Collins Ave, Miami Beach. All art installations are free and open to the public.

This story was originally published December 2, 2025 at 7:51 PM.