Up Close with Sophya Acosta

By Randy Reid

The necessity for survival is a wonderfully motivating tool, as was the case with immersive lighting artist Sophya Acosta.

She describes herself as a theater girl who also liked science and math. Much of her income is earned in her native Argentina, but I recently met up with her in her second home, Barcelona.

Sophya has been around theater her entire life. At age 6 she was a child performer and at 14 was a director assistant in her school theater club. She designed her first lighting job at age 18 and won a scholarship from the US Embassy in Argentina to study at the University of Virginia. She studied lighting design at the National University of Arts of Argentina.

Sophya earned her living doing traditional stage lighting; that career ended when the pandemic began. During the second half of 2020, she landed a six-month stage lighting job on a cruise ship and quickly realized that she needed a new career path. Sophya explains that it is tricky to be a young woman in the stage lighting industry, “In the past 10 years, a lot has changed in the business, and a few things haven’t.” She said that big projects are still managed by men, and she didn’t want to be the assistant of the assistant.

When COVID hit, while her stage lighting peers panicked as their careers disappeared, Sophya struck out on her own creating immersive light art, where she had entire control of the project. She remembers telling her former colleagues, “We are not suspended in time during the pandemic, and I am going to create my own work.” When employed with stage production, she was part of a crew, but by creating light art she was her own producer. Sophya still wanted to work with a team, but on her own terms. She created Sophya Acosta Lighting Design Studio.

A current project is the lighting design for Las dimensiones de la luz (the dimensions of light), which premiered this month in Barcelona. Sophya explained, “It is a mix between light art and theater play that explores different dimensions of light.” The design concept took two months, and the installation took about two weeks. In Las dimensiones her design is to trick the audience to think one thing and see another.

“Lighting designers tend to be invisible, working behind the scenes,” she said. “And I don’t want to be behind the curtain anymore. I would like to be visible and allow people to discover the power of light as a main material of creating.” Most stage lighting is seen as far away, but Sophya is changing that by making the audience part of the design. Lighting plays on the relationship between the eyes and color, and the theme goes deep down to the culture of light to consider stories that we are told as kids that shape the way we relate to light.

"I would like to be visible and allow people to discover the power of light as a main material of creating.”

—Sophya Acosta

I asked her to contrast her work to the recent immersive Van Gogh exhibit that is touring the U.S. She explained that “Van Gogh is based on projectors and mapping. My design calls for the audience to be immersed in the light art.” Her objective is to merge light art and stage design to create a unique immersive approach for the audience.

The seasonality of her two countries complements each other, as Spain is busy with theater in the summer months, while high season in Argentina is in winter. Sophya Acosta Lighting Design Studio is, in essence, a traveling studio.

While she learned how to design, no one taught her how to manage the entire lighting design process which includes relationships with clients, manufacturers, media and consultants, and she has learned the importance of strong relationships. She is preparing now for the Luz 2022 conference in Buenos Aires, as this will be a tremendous no-cost opportunity to get in front of lighting designers and receive their feedback.

Her personal goal is to write about the lighting design process and write about Light Art and to expose more people to this new art form.

Her displays offer 3 main components: art, light, and immersiveness, which almost by definition make her exhibits highly Instagrammable, giving her a tremendous marketing benefit. Every attendee is a possible future marketer for her work. ■