Event 2026

Light is Shadow

The Japanese design studio MEDUM presents “Light is Shadow”, a new installation exploring the subtle and profound dialogue between illumination and darkness, light and shadow.

Where

Back 12 — Via Tortona, 12, Milano
Map

When

20-26 April 2026

Program

Entry rules

Read

Light is Shadow — Exhibition Page

Brands

MEDUM

Designers

Shintaro Monden

The event belongs to

Tortona Design Week 2026

Installations Lighting Special materials Sustainability Technology

MEDUM presents "Light is Shadow", an immersive installation exploring 'Awai'—the Japanese concept of the charged interval between opposing states. Neither fully light nor fully shadow, Awai names the threshold that modern life, in its relentless pursuit of brightness, has quietly erased.

Drawing on the sensibility Junichiro Tanizaki articulated in 'In Praise of Shadows', MEDUM treats light and shadow not as opposites to be resolved, but as equivalents to be designed together. The medium is inorganic electroluminescent sheet—flexible, low-energy, freely cut from a single surface without waste—glowing softly in a way that inhabits space rather than floods it.

Alongside the installation, an archive presents MEDUM’s representative works and prototyping process, offering a window into the studio’s ongoing inquiry at the intersection of material research, technology, and everyday sensory experience.

Press preview on April 19th, from 3 pm to 6 pm

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