Art Lit

Malaysian architect and light artist Jun Ong blazes a trail across Southeast Asia.

- Lawrence Carlos

In the last couple of years, Jun Ong has grown into one of Southeast Asia’s most exciting design talents.

Straddling the line between art and architecture, Ong utilizes light to create ephemeral moments within specific sites, manipulating scale visually and experientially by combining lighting fixtures and minimal structural elements. In this interview, Ong looks back at some of his most well known installations and shares his fascination for light as a material.

How and when did your interest in creating light installations come about?

Before pursuing architecture, I have always had a strong interest in the arts. For my final MA thesis, I studied the form-making process of Cubist artist Picasso and metal welder Julio Gonzalez, and its parallels with form-making in architecture. In my works, I was drawn to artificial light for its inherent tangible and intangible properties, its ability to create structure and invigorate otherwise sterile space. A short stint in the studio of Tom Dixon in London heightened my interests in bespoke lighting objects and materiality.