Celebrating the Women who bring the spark in life – Happy Women’s Day !

From the beginning, kobi lighting studio has been staffed by a majority of women whose determination is unmatched. Because today is Women’s Day, we wanted to pay tribute to women, especially those who work in our team and studio.

René Barjavel said in 1981 in “Une rose au paradis” :

” Les hommes rêvent, créent des mondes idéaux et des dieux. Les femmes assurent la solidité et la continuité de la réalité “

” Men dream, create ideal worlds and gods. Women ensure the solidity and continuity of reality.”

If the importance of women in society is no longer to be proven, it is indeed the complementarity between the two sexes that brings added value and allows harmony. In our agency, this complementarity between talents, women and men allows us to form a solid team and to carry our company with strength and determination towards successful lighting projects.

On this Women’s Day, we wanted to highlight the work of Thu Van Tran, a French artist of Vietnamese origin. Her story and her work moved us because they resonate with the way we see the world at kobi lighting studio. Given our biculturality, we have at heart to make known to the Vietnamese but also to the French this artist.

We chose to focus on her artwork “A place in the sun”, which depicts housekeepers living in Hong Kong protesting on their day off, and to analyze her work from a light perspective. Choosing this artwork on Women’s day is a way to contribute further to the progress of women’s rights, to further state their right to express themselves and to be recognized.

Thu Van Tran utilizes the light in her artwork to represent transience : she seeks to capture the phenomenon of appearance and disappearance. This artwork represents one of the cleaning ladies holding one of the boxes they use during their demonstration. This woman is in movement, the artist has represented her departure.

The artist unfolded photosensitive paper in front of a bay window and placed cardboard boxes used by the demonstrators on top. She also added clothes to this composition to give the impression of human bodies. Everything was exposed for months and the chemical effect produced saturated and brilliant blue tones with different effects.

In this artwork, the light is treated in a melancholic way, the artist seeks to materialize the absence of these women who return home at night and must postpone their activism. The artist gives us access to a fleeting moment that should have disappeared and be forgotten, but that the light has brought to life. By letting the sunlight etch the elements on the paper, the artist obtained a unique, surprising result. Thu Van Tran highlights the contradiction of the strength of these women with their fragility, the woman represented seems ready to fall but uses her cardboard, the object of her struggle to remain standing. She seems almost invisible, which could evoke the ignorance of people towards her, yet the light is revealing the silence of women.

For Thu Van Tran and for kobi, light is therefore a medium, a way to get a message across. Just like the artist who mixes semantics and materiality, kobi lighting studio seeks to generate and convey emotions and sensations through light. Through light we create atmospheres, we give the place a soul.

By directing the light on elements of the space we give them life, we draw the viewer’s eye to them. In the same way as Thu Van Tran, kobi uses the light to make these elements appear, to counteract their reduction to silence. When the evening light takes precedence over the daylight, our lighting allows the architecture and selected details to live longer.

Like Thu Van Tran who, thanks to the light, allowed us to have access to the vision of an absent woman in the evening, we allow people to be able to perceive the elements that should have disappeared at nightfall.

In conclusion, if the photosensitive work of Thu Van Tran could not have existed without the light of the sun, the light of kobi lighting studio would definitely be nothing without the exceptional women in our team who make our strength. Today we were inspired by the work of Thu Van Tran and we would hope that it could inspire you as well, but every day it’s the women of kobi who keep inspiring us.