05/21/2026
An anti-monument to the Confederacy comes home.
This summer, “Abigail DeVille (): Deo Vindice (Orion’s Cabinet)” will travel from the acclaimed MONUMENTS exhibition to be shown here in Richmond at the ICA.
In early April 1865, fleeing Confederate officials in Richmond, VA, ordered the city burned to prevent its munitions and railway foundry from falling into Union hands, reducing the Confederate capital to ruins. DeVille’s immersive installation meditates on the fall of Richmond at the end of the Civil War.
Inspired by photographs taken in the aftermath of the fire, DeVille constructs clusters of colonial-style curio cabinets—charred, skeletal, and lashed together by monument-restoration scaffolding wrapped in singed fabric.
The myth of the Lost Cause minimizes the centrality of maintaining slavery to the South’s secession, positing a softer picture of rebellion in the face of tyranny.
DeVille exposes the irony at the heart of this narrative. Cabinets like these are intended to shield heirlooms from dust and decay. Likewise, Lost Cause ideology has attempted to protect a distorted historical memory from the corrections of modern scholarship. Just as the burned cabinets have lost their protective utility, the Confederacy’s claim of defending its people is betrayed by its own leaders setting the city ablaze.
The cabinet clusters trace the principal stars of the constellation Orion, drawing a parallel between the mythological hunter’s drive to dominate and the Confederacy’s drive to preserve white supremacy. In both cases, their will to power drove them to ruin.
Deo Vindice will open on June 5 and be on view until August 18. Join us for the opening on June 5 from 5 to 9 PM. To learn more and to RSVP click the link in bio. The ICA is free and open to the public.
The Richmond debut of Deo Vindice (Orion’s Cabinet) is curated by Amber Esseiva, Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the ICA with research support by Kennedy Jones, Curatorial Assistant
Photo:
Installation view of MONUMENTS, October 23, 2025–May 3, 2026, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. (Photograph by Fredrik Nilsen; courtesy of MOCA and The Brick)
