Deo Vindice (Orion’s Cabinet) is an artwork that has been created in 2025 by Abigail DeVille (b. 1981, New York, New York). It has been part of the group show “Monuments” at The Geffen at MOCA and The Brick in Los Angeles.
Deo Vindice (Orion’s Cabinet), 2025, consists of China cabinets, charcoal, rusted steel scaffoiding, pig blood, sall, mud, lights, and natural fiber. This is what the official description says about the piece: “Commissioned by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Brick Courtesy of the artist Abigail DeVille creates immersive sculptural installations, often with found matenals, that gesture to both the past and the future, placing historical events within a larger, even cosmolog ical context. History, mythology, memory, and loss intersect in visceral and poetic fashion in Deo Vindice (Orion’s Cabinet).
The work’s arrangement of charred and blistered colonial-style curiocabinets was inspired by photographs of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, which was set ablaze and nearly razed to the ground by the retreating Confederate army in the final days of the Civil War. In DeVille’s work, the cabinets are both ruined political landscape and scarred holders of domestic memory. The work’s title, Deo Vindice, was the motto of the Confederacy. Translated as “With God as Our Defender” or “God Will Avenge,” the phrase underscored the Confederate belief that its formation was divinely foretold and its failed war to defend slavery was just.”

Abigail DeVille: Deo Vindice (Orion’s Cabinet), 2025. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, March 6, 2026.