Isa Cruz

This summer, artist Abigail DeVille opened her exhibition titled “Abigail DeVille: In the Fullness of Time” at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA). The exhibition is a continuation of “Abigail DeVille: Bronx Heavens,” a body of work originally showcased by the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

The exhibit explores themes of forgotten history, time and migration among marginalized communities. DeVille worked with curators at both the Bronx Museum of Arts and the BCMA to bring her work to life.

“[DeVille] is thinking both about the histories that human beings tell, but I think she’s also thinking about the things that escape those historical structures,” BCMA Co-Director Anne Collins Goodyear said. “She is looking at the ways in which changes and transformations have happened as people have migrated across the globe. I think she’s exploring implicitly why those migrations have happened.”

Goodyear also noted how DeVille explores the wider theme of how human history fits into the larger evolution of the cosmos.

“[DeVille] creates an opportunity for us to recontextualize our lives within this much bigger picture that in a sense orients us to the connections between ourselves in the larger world as opposed to focusing our attention on the divisions,” she said.

DeVille plays with a sense of place in addition to exploring themes of space and time. Goodyear said that while transforming the exhibition to be displayed in the BCMA, they also considered how the physical space of the museum could be used to alter the meaning of the work. Some of the exhibitions’ sculptures were shifted to fit into the museum’s smaller gallery spaces and rotunda.

“[This] really was the first time that we’ve been working with large-scale installation and sculpture,” BCMA curator Casey Braun said. “[It’s] an example of how [DeVille’s] sculptures are site-specific installations that change both visually and in terms of their meaning depending on where they’re installed.”

DeVille’s original exhibition specifically related to the Bronx, her family’s history and the history of New York City. But DeVille decided to focus her exhibition in the BCMA on Maine’s history, people and coastal life.

“[I] do feel that the language of the water is very strong here,” Goodyear said. “And of course, Maine, back in the day, made its name as a very important port.”

Another reference to Maine tied into this exhibition is the “Lunar Capsule,” placed in the museum rotunda. The “Lunar Capsule” is a sculpture with a recording device inside that invites visitors to sit and share a story, sentence or song to create an oral history. The BCMA staff moved the sculpture to Houlton, Lewiston, Portland and Bowdoin’s campus during the powwow organized by the Native American Student Association for people to record their stories last year. The audio recordings were saved and played out loud in another art piece titled “Black Monolith.”

“We really wanted there to already be stories from Mainers and from people passing through Maine when the exhibition opened in June,” Braun said. “It presented some logistical challenges, like literally [moving the sculpture] around the state of Maine, but it was well worth it.”

Student curator Zoë Pringle ’27 also worked alongside Braun and Goodyear on the exhibit this summer. She helped listen to all the recordings from the “Lunar Capsule” and chose which recordings to include in “Black Monolith” on the first floor.

“I think what’s so cool about [the exhibition] is that there’s multiple threads of migration. She uses a Dutch trading ship in one of her pieces, so there’s that aspect of colonization of New York, where she’s from. There’s also the great migration, which her family was a part of,” Pringle said. “I liked that her whole kind of throughline is this deep personal connection with her family, but she also ties it to broader themes in American history and the universe.”