Bronx Heavens, The Bronx Museum of the Arts 2022

“ ‘I like to think about our place within the cosmos or the stars. Breaking out of this smallness and the ways in which we’ve been forced to compartmentalize everything,’ she [DeVille] shares thoughtfully. DeVille’s art pushes for liberation and expansive thought. Through urban sculptural interventions and immersive installations, she protects and reclaims lost Black narratives—whether placing smiling plaster casts of her face at her paternal grandfather’s childhood home in Harlem or honoring a centuries-old African burial ground in East Harlem through a debris-sourced sculptural homage.”

Abigail DeVille Illuminates the Majesty of her Hometown by Jasmin Hernandez

Installation view of Bronx Heavens at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. 10.12.2022 - 06.18.2023
Curated by Eileen Jeng Lynch.


(NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 1, 2022) – The Bronx Museum of the Arts is pleased to announce Abigail DeVille: Bronx Heavens, the artist’s first museum survey which will examine the myths and realities of local, familial and ancestral histories and the convoluted notion of freedom in a country fraught with oppression and racism. Bronx Heavens will feature DeVille’s work created over the past ten years, and examine different aspects of the borough’s 120 year history as a haven for immigrant and migrant communities, including for several generations of DeVille’s family who have lived in the area and were part of the Great Migration.