Sticks illuminates SPUMA at the Venice Biennial

The 2021 edition of the Venice Design Biennial is taking place between May 20th and June 27th with specific precautions to reflect the unusual global circumstances faced by presential events.

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial
Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

Nonetheless Vibia is showcasing one of its latest architectural lighting solution designed by Arik Levy, Sticks. The theme of this year’s edition is Design as Self-Portrait, a particularly apt title given the endless possibilities that Sticks represents for customising spaces where literally no area of a space is off limits for creating with light.

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

“What we have done is break this idea of modularity and introduce flexibility and this, if you look at contemporary lifestyle is what we want. We want to be different, we have to be different because we are different.”, says Arik Levy

A lighting installation featuring Sticks configured by the designer is accommodated within SPUMA – Space for the Arts, on the island of Giudecca within the Venetian lagoon.

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

The overall exhibition Design as Self-Portrait part II is curated by Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei and examines the role that design plays in how we express and represent ourselves and construct our identity.

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial
Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

The former industrial space has a raw materiality which is transformed by the lighting and is the ideal showcase for how Vibia as a company conceives its lighting products, architecture and lighting should be indistinguishable.

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial
Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

Sticks offers a flexibility rarely associated with lighting system, conceived as a series of light ‘rods’ the eponymous sticks can straddle a space freely breaking down the notion of ceiling, wall or floor lamps. Sticks is all these and more. Arik Levy explains,

“it’s the only system today that adapts to the user and not the user adapting to the system.”

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial
Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

The flexibility and versatility of the Sticks lighting toolkit is possible thanks to its minimal components, an extruded aluminium profile that accommodates led technology and its ball and socket rotating joint. Together any number of configurations is made possible which in order to adapt is simply rotated, by hand; no special equipment required.

Vibia The Edit - Sticks at the Venice Biennial

If design is at the service of creating a self-portrait then Sticks is certainly one of the more useful tools available.

Credits:
– Photographer: Fernando Alda
– Video: Paco Martín