'Abigail DeVille: In the Fullness of Time' Brings Explorations of Community Narratives to Maine

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) is pleased to highlight an exhibition of recent works by artist Abigail DeVille exploring what it means to make history and how our interventions into understanding the past can impact the future. With particular emphasis on the experience of communities of color in the United States, DeVille mines her own experience growing up in the Bronx to explore the specificity of place and how it shapes our sense of self. Organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Abigail DeVille: In the Fullness of Time features approximately 30 works, including prints and an installation newly created for this presentation, continuing DeVille’s practice of using found materials and detritus to create works of art that bring forward the often forgotten—and sometimes erased—narratives of marginalized individuals, uniquely reflecting these stories. In the Fullness of Time opened on June 29, 2024 and will be on view through November 10, 2024.

Central to DeVille’s work is the process of gathering both the physical objects that she uses to make her work and the oral histories that connect her art to these communities. In preparation for this show, the BCMA, in coordination with the artist, toured the artist’s Lunar Capsule to communities throughout Maine, gathering oral histories that are now part of the exhibition. Designed to record the voices of interested participants, Lunar Capsule traveled to Houlton during the recent total solar eclipse on April 8^th, 2024, as well as to Portland’s Indigo Arts Alliance and to Maine MILL in Lewiston. It was also featured at Bowdoin College’s Inaugural 2024 Powwow. Building upon the stories shared by Mainers and visitors to the state—and on her own experiences of the region as an artist in residence, and a student and faculty members at the Skowhegan School of Art and Design—DeVille explores the foundational narratives and mythologies of Maine. 

DeVille’s work, which reflects stories that are at once personal, national, and cosmic in nature, provides a poignant vehicle through which to examine the relationship of communities to place and to the aspirational mythologies that convey a sense of purpose and inspiration. As the artist explains: “Human beings are time capsules of all of human history. Our genome contains the coding of the last 500 years of ancestry imprinted upon us. We silently traverse centuries in our daily perceptions of self. Are there ways we can travel through immediate and recent events with the inherited knowledge contained within us? What are the unanswerable questions of our existence, and what binds us together inextricably? In the Fullness of Time seeks to collect, examine, and disseminate the ruminations and stories that tie together a local region with diverse perspectives. The same elements of stardust, the universe's building blocks, are in our bodies. We are little lights, dimmed, concealed, flickering, and shining brightly through the darkness of everyday living.” While her work is rooted in specific places, the stories her work captures are transcendent in nature.

“Abigail DeVille’s methodology of bringing together artifact and oral history is a powerful approach to highlighting and sharing alternative and lesser-known narratives,” said Anne Collins Goodyear, co-director of the BCMA. “Because she has actively engaged with the communities whose stories she presents and history she explores, her work invites a similar level of engagement from viewers. The overarching connectedness between people, their communities, and the lands they inhabit comes through clearly, an experience we think will be inspiring for audiences in Maine.”

Added Frank Goodyear, Co-director of the BCMA, “Abigail DeVille was a wonderful artist to have in residence at the College, bringing an array of new ideas and perspectives on art-making to our campus. In the Fullness of Time provides an exciting opportunity for us to present contemporary art and at the same time present an exploration of the diverse communities of Maine, challenging and changing visitors’ expectations.”

With the theme of cosmology woven throughout her practice, DeVille seeks both to celebrate our differences and to encourage people to transcend the specificity often associated with particular identities and histories. Questioning the categorization of individuals, DeVille explores the interconnectedness of people and land across time. Her exhibition reminds visitors that the historical record is incomplete, creating space for personal stories—such as those captured in the Lunar Capsule—and serves as a portal encouraging visitors to imagine alternative narratives. The exhibition builds upon DeVille’s experiences at Bowdoin College as the halley k harrisburg ’90 and Michael Rosenfeld Artist in Residence during the 2022–2023 academic year, as well as upon her exhibition Bronx Heavens, which opened at The Bronx Museum in 2022.

Among the highlight works in the show are selections from DeVille’s Libertas series, named in honor of the Roman goddess who personifies freedom. Interrogating both historic and contemporary icons of liberty, this group of eight works explores how a society premised on personal freedom supports its most vulnerable members and asks what emblems of the ideal of liberty resonate most strongly today. Other pieces, such as Columbia and Halve Maen look at the relationship between memory and naming and casts our attention on how history is quite literally inscribed or erased from historical records. The exhibition also includes The Miser's Heart (yo soy oro) (2024), a newly created work by DeVille alluding to The Miracle of the Miser’s Heart (ca. 1505–1520) by the Workshop of Raphael, one of the first works to enter Bowdoin’s collection. DeVille thus explores the institution’s history in considering both the place that it occupies and the communities and individuals who have helped to shape it over time.

Abigail DeVille: In the Fullness of Time is complemented by an eponymous catalogue available through the BCMA’s gift shop or online. The artist’s reflections on the exhibition are included in a recent interview conducted by Zoë Pringel ’27 and Axel Rommel ’25, available here. Please stay tuned for upcoming programming this fall!

Abigail DeVille: In the Fullness of Time is a continuation of Bronx Heavens (2022–2023), curated by Eileen Jeng Lynch, Director of Curatorial Programs at The Bronx Museum.