Artist Uses Paint and Light to Create Dazzling Kaleidoscopic Installation Rooms

Japanese artist Asae Soya playfully employs light and color to create dazzling displays that can transform any space. Though she has formal training as a painter, she is also skilled in drawing, installation work, and video art, which she often combines into mixed media masterpieces, like her stunning series of animated psychedelic projections.

Using only white walls, reflective decals, and dancing rays of light, Soya turns ordinary rooms into gleaming fairylands. Inspired by her paintings, Soya creates vivid videos and gleaming animations composed of abstract forms, moving plains of color, and water-esque reflections. She then projects these large moving pictures onto the walls, floors, and ceilings of a space, resulting in dreamy and luminous walk-through installations that, according to her website, “can awaken not only viewers’ visual senses but also their physical sensations.”

In addition to her experimental gallery transformations, Soya also adds her signature pops of color to windows and other glass structures found in public spaces, from medical centers to preschools. When light passes through these installations, the floor—and anything else in its path—is dappled with a spectacular array of colors, adding a little bit of kaleidoscopic cheer to everyday life.

In collaboration with Slow Label, a small manufacturing company, Soya has opened a shop that sells goodies inspired by her glittery creations.