Grimanesa Amorós & Contemporary Light Art

Grimanesa Amorós is a Peruvian-born American artist and one of the pioneering women in light art. Working since 2002, she treats light as both her material and her language, building large-scale LED light sculptures and immersive public installations that explore memory, cultural identity, community, and the relationship between light and space.

She is best known for monumental, site-specific light sculptures that fuse LED technology with organic, luminous forms. Her work transforms public squares, museums, and architectural spaces into immersive environments, and is widely recognized for bringing her Peruvian heritage — especially the floating totora-reed islands of the Uros people — into contemporary light art.

She was born in Lima, Peru, and is now a Peruvian-American artist based in New York City. Her Peruvian roots are central to her practice and recur throughout her work, from the Uros Islands of Lake Titicaca to the landscapes and history of Peru.

Her sculptures are built from LEDs, diffusion and reflective material, stainless steel, polycarbonate, and custom-programmed lighting sequences. By combining advanced lighting technology with handmade, organic forms, she creates works that feel at once futuristic and deeply human.

Her most celebrated works are large-scale, site-specific light installations for landmark architecture and public space. Recent commissions include RADIANCE at Walt Disney Concert Hall, created for the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Scriabin’s Prometheus under conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and PERFECT TIMING for the Printemps flagship at One Wall Street in New York. For The Peninsula Hotels she created PASSAGE and MARITIME in Istanbul and PINK LOTUS in New York. Other landmark works include AMPLEXUS for Noor Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; GOLDEN ARRAY at Jio World Drive in Mumbai, India; SCIENTIA at Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao, Spain; UROS HOUSE in Times Square, New York; HEDERA in Prospect Park, Brooklyn; and GOLDEN WATERS, extending into the canal in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Her work has been exhibited at major museums, biennials, and galleries across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Prominent venues include the 54th Venice Biennale; the Grand Palais in Paris; the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, Germany; the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum (CAFAM) in Beijing; the Today Art Museum in Beijing; the Museum of Art at Seoul National University; the National Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, Taiwan; the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam; the FLAG Art Foundation, the Katonah Museum of Art, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts — which holds her sculpture ARGENTUM in its permanent collection — in New York; and Litvak Gallery in Tel Aviv.

Her recognition includes a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Visual Artists Fellowship, a New York City Public Design Commission Award for Excellence in Design, and participation in the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program.

Her work has been covered by major international media, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, the BBC, Architectural Digest, Hyperallergic, and HuffPost. Coverage spans her HEDERA installation in Prospect Park, GOLDEN ARRAY in Mumbai, and AMPLEXUS for Noor Riyadh. A fuller list appears in her selected press.

Her work draws on cultural heritage, social history, and the natural world. Having grown up in Peru, she returns repeatedly to the floating Uros Islands and totora reeds of Lake Titicaca, to themes of memory and community, and to the universal human response to light. You can read more in her biography.

She studied at the Art Students League of New York, an institution central to her development as a visual artist.

Inquiries about exhibitions, commissions, and collaborations can be sent through her studio’s contact page, or via Instagram (@grimanesaamoros), LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Light art is a form of contemporary art in which light itself is the primary medium, rather than paint, stone, or canvas. Artists use sources such as neon, fluorescent tubes, projection, and LEDs to shape space, perception, and atmosphere. It overlaps with light sculpture, light installation, and immersive or environmental art.

Widely recognized light artists include James Turrell, Dan Flavin, Olafur Eliasson, Bruce Nauman, Jenny Holzer, Leo Villareal, and Grimanesa Amorós. Each uses light as a core medium — from Turrell’s perceptual skyspaces and Flavin’s fluorescent works to Amorós’ large-scale LED sculptures rooted in cultural memory.

Prominent women working with light include Grimanesa Amorós, Jenny Holzer, Mary Corse, Ann Veronica Janssens, and Liz West. Grimanesa Amorós is often cited as one of the pioneering women in light art for her monumental, technologically ambitious public LED installations.

A light sculpture is a three-dimensional artwork in which light is integral to the form itself, not merely an addition to it. Grimanesa Amorós’ light sculptures, for example, use illuminated diffusion material and LEDs so that the object reads as a glowing, sculptural mass that changes as its light shifts.

A light installation is an immersive, often site-specific artwork that uses light to transform an entire space and the viewer’s experience of it. Rather than being viewed from a single vantage point, the audience moves through or around it. Amorós’ public installations are designed specifically for each location, responding to its architecture and surroundings.

LED art uses light-emitting diodes — energy-efficient, programmable, long-lasting light sources — as an artistic medium. Artists known for LED work include Leo Villareal, Jim Campbell, and Grimanesa Amorós, whose monumental LED light sculptures combine custom lighting sequences with handcrafted forms.

Artists use light to define and reshape space, to direct attention, to evoke emotion, and to alter perception over time. Through color, intensity, movement, and diffusion, light can make architecture feel weightless or turn a public plaza into an immersive environment — the effect at the heart of Grimanesa Amorós’ practice.

Peru has a rich contemporary art scene that includes artists such as Grimanesa Amorós, known internationally for her light sculptures and public installations, alongside figures like Fernando Bryce and Sandra Gamarra. Amorós is among the most internationally visible Peruvian-born artists working with light and technology.