Welcome at Studio Irma
Discover our world
Studio Irma creates immersive environments where perception shifts and connection takes shape. Studio Irma explores how the body relates to space, light, rhythm, and to one another, inviting visitors to become participants rather than spectators.
Drawing from neuroscience and sensory research, she develops experiential landscapes that heighten awareness and presence. Technology is used as a tool for attention, not distraction.
Nothing exists without the visitor — meaning emerges through interaction and shared presence.
Exhibitions
We invite you to explore our highlighted exhibitions, where meaning exists through the presence of the visitor
Studio Irma’s exhibitions grow from an investigation into how we experience the world mentally, physically, and emotionally. They explore how perception is shaped by light, movement, rhythm, space, and by the presence of others. Each exhibition invites visitors to slow down, sense more deeply, and become aware of how they feel as they move through an environment.
The work unfolds as a dialogue between art, science, and the human mind. Collaborations with scientists and researchers inform how installations respond to the nervous system, emotion, and perception. Science is not presented as explanation but translated into experience. Nothing exists without the visitor — meaning emerges through presence, interaction, and shared attention, where visitors shape the work through their movement and awareness.
Within the Exhibitions menu, we highlight the following three exhibitions: Reflecting Forward , Happiness , and Planet Happiness
Reflecting Forward
In Search of Connectivism
Reflecting Forward is Studio Irma’s exploration of how we connect to ourselves, others, and the world. Through light, color, movement, and digital technology, the work invites visitors to feel connection rather than explain it, revealing how perception and emotion shape belonging and a hopeful, shared future.
Inspired by connectivism, Reflecting Forward celebrates connections and sees the future as a web of relationships. Works like Diamond Matrix explore pressure, transformation, and resilience, using the diamond as a symbol of strength shaped by intensity. The exhibition embraces complexity while pointing to growth and shared understanding.
Other works in Reflecting Forward, such as Connect the Dots and Universe, draw on the idea that everything shares the same fundamental matter. Moving constellations and rhythms evoke cosmic harmony, inviting visitors into a larger dance of connection and reflection on empathy and togetherness. More about Reflecting Forward can be found at Moco Museum.
Reflecting Forward has been experienced by millions of visitors worldwide, and Diamond Matrix is now permanently on view as part of the collection at Moco Museum Amsterdam and Barcelona.
Within the Exhibitions menu, we highlight the following three exhibitions: Reflecting Forward , Happiness , and Planet Happiness
Happiness
Art, A Postive Boost For Your Brain
Happiness explores the link between art and our emotional state in times of pressure. Inspired by research, including studies from the World Health Organization, the exhibition shows how art can shape how we feel, think, and connect. Through color, form, and movement, it creates a playful space that sparks joy, curiosity, and awareness.
Happiness translates research into experience. Psychological insights are woven into the artworks, where visual stimuli and playful interaction influence mood and perception. Colorful, immersive spaces create a sense of openness and lightness, showing how subtle sensory changes can shift how we feel.
The exhibition is supported by voices from psychology, philosophy, and mental health, including psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter, Professor Lieven Annemans, and Dr. Vincent Lustygier. They emphasize art and culture as spaces for reflection, dialogue, and resilience in a pressured world. Happiness does not instruct, but invites visitors to pause, connect, and reflect on care, vulnerability, and shared well-being.
Happiness was presented at the Palais de la Dynastie in Brussels, where the exhibition formed part of a broader cultural program curated by BEYOND.CULTURE, with production support by Congé.Inviting visitors of all ages to explore how happiness is not a fixed state, but something that can be nurtured through connection, creativity, and shared moments of attention.
Within the Exhibitions menu, we highlight the following three exhibitions: Reflecting Forward , Happiness , and Planet Happiness
PLanet Happiness
When you see Earth from space, you don’t see borders, you see one shared home
Planet Happiness invites a shift in perspective. Inspired by research in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), the exhibition reflects on how astronauts view Earth from space, where borders fade and fragility becomes visible. It invites visitors to reconsider their relationship with the planet, with one another, and with the shared responsibility we carry for the world we inhabit.
Drawing from studies on how astronauts live under pressure and isolation, Planet Happiness reflects on how care, cooperation, and mental balance become essential in space. The exhibition translates these insights into an immersive experience rooted in love for our planet, inviting reflection on empathy, resilience, and collective well-being. By linking human emotion to the vastness of the universe, the work expresses a deep care for Earth and a hopeful vision for a shared future.
Planet Happiness was presented at the Palais de la Dynastie in Brussels, where the exhibition formed part of a broader cultural program curated by BEYOND.CULTURE, with production support by Congé.
Within the Exhibitions menu, we highlight the following three exhibitions: Reflecting Forward , Happiness , and Planet Happiness
Outdoor Exhibitions
The digital and the physical come together as one shared experience, moving with you and those around you
Reflecting Forward outside is a series of digital artworks about reflection, movement, and presence.
The works are made of light, color, and digital layers that respond to you as you move. When you walk through them, your reflection slowly becomes part of the work. It is never fixed and never captured. It changes with every step you take, with where you stand, and with the people who are there with you.
During the COVID period, when indoor spaces closed and distance became part of everyday life, Reflecting Forward moved outside. The works were placed in public space, on the Museumplein in Amsterdam and in the gardens of Museum Fraeylemaborg. This made it possible for people to encounter art safely, in the open air, while still being together.
Outside, the work could be experienced by walking through it rather than entering a building. People passed each other, slowed down, paused for a moment, and moved on again. Reflection no longer happened alone, but in shared space. Even while keeping physical distance, there was a sense of connection through light, movement, and presence.
In the open air, the work gained another layer. The digital reflections met the city, the sky, the changing weather, and the rhythm of daily life. Reality became part of the artwork, and the artwork became part of reality. Art was no longer held inside walls, but gently woven into public space.
Reflecting Forward outside offered a way to be together without gathering. A way to experience art without closing yourself off. And a reminder that connection can exist, even in moments when it is most fragile and most needed.
Digital Artworks
Welcome to tune into a world shaped by connection
These digital artworks invite you to step into another world for a moment.
A world that moves and unfolds, guided by curiosity rather than clear answers. What you encounter shifts with time, perspective, and presence, opening space for reflection instead of explanation.
The works have been shown in different contexts, from museums to international art fairs such as :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} and :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}, where they were experienced as living systems rather than fixed images.
Here, three digital artworks come together, each with its own focus and atmosphere: Let’s Paint , Don’t Forget to Think Outside the Box , Life Is Organic
Let's Paint
Is a digital, interactive artwork about presence, imitation and trace
You paint together with a digital being. It mirrors your movements in real time, not as a copy, but as a response. Every gesture leaves a mark. Every pause changes the rhythm.
The paint is real. Each stroke you see is made from physical paint, once applied by hand, later digitized. What appears on the screen carries weight, texture and history. This gives the work a tactile honesty — even in its digital form, it remembers the hand.
The figure does not lead, and it does not follow. It moves with you. Between you, a shared surface emerges. A painting that exists only because of interaction, attention and timing.
With a single touch, the motion can be stopped. The figure disappears, leaving the traces behind. What remains is a still image — your painting. A moment captured. Or you let the movement continue, and the work stays alive, unfinished, breathing
Let’s Paint is not about control or perfection. It is about dialogue. About learning how a gesture becomes memory. About the thin line between making and letting go.
In the digital artwork menu, three works come together, each with its own focus and atmosphere: Let’s Paint , Don’t Forget to Think Outside the Box , Life Is Organic
Don't forget to think outside the box
When it moves with you
This interactive painting continuously shifts in color and perspective, responding to the viewer’s movements. The box remains perfectly aligned with you, never breaking its frame. Each attempt to escape is met with a subtle challenge, inviting you to change position, direction, or mindset.
Rather than offering an exit, the work mirrors your behavior. Every movement reshapes the experience, revealing how perception, control, and freedom are negotiated in real time. The box does not confine you; it follows you. In doing so, it asks a quiet but persistent question: what does it really mean to think outside the box when the box is shaped by your own actions?
In the digital artwork menu, three works come together, each with its own focus and atmosphere: Let’s Paint , Don’t Forget to Think Outside the Box , Life Is Organic
Life is Organic
A living System
What you see on the screen is never the same twice. The image is made of countless small elements that move like cells in a body. They drift, attract, repel, and reorganize themselves continuously. Their movement is guided by invisible forces that resemble magnetism, gravity, and wind, rather than by fixed rules or loops.
Nothing is repeated. Nothing is frozen. The image is always becoming.
The system is inspired by nature. By how cells interact, how matter responds to pressure, how growth happens without a plan. The movement feels organic, almost biological, as if the image is breathing, shifting and confirming its own existence moment by moment.
Color plays a quiet but essential role. The palette is drawn from stones, minerals, and natural materials. These tones are grounded and calm. They give the work weight and depth, allowing the movement to remain gentle rather than restless.
Although the work is generated by a computer system, technology stays in the background. What becomes visible is not the machine, but flow. Not control, but balance. The screen does not show a game to be played, but a process to be witnessed.
The work can be presented horizontally or vertically, adapting to the space it inhabits. Wherever it is placed, it remains in constant motion, offering change without urgency and complexity without noise.
This is a digital work that behaves like nature does
Always moving
Always responding
Never finished
In the digital artwork menu, three works come together, each with its own focus and atmosphere: Let’s Paint , Don’t Forget to Think Outside the Box , Life Is Organic
About Studio Irma
Welcome to my world, your world, our world.
One in which our bond is our ability to share a common space and place that unites us into a world shaped by us.Studio Irma creates environments for people to gather; where everyone is welcomed, not as a spectator, but as a participant. Each work of art is meant to inspire people to slow down, move, sense, and connect.
At the heart of Studio Irma’s work lies a deep curiosity about how human beings can coexist more harmoniously in today’s world. How the body moves through space. How our nervous system, mental health, emotion, and rhythm are all tied together and form the foundation of who we are, and how this influences the way we respond to light, color, sound, and, of course, to one another.
Studio Irma explores these human complexities by using science-based knowledge and state-of-the-art technology to create experiential maps of human perception and awareness. Evolving technologies such as AI, VR, and AR are used as tools to tell stories rather than as an end in themselves, creating connection, interaction, and shared presence.
Community is central. Empathy is essential. Each installation creates an environment that becomes a place where people meet, respond to one another, and co-create in a shared harmony. Nothing exists without the visitor. Through interaction and presence, the work reveals its meaning.
Studio Irma’s projects grow from an artistic vision that opens into collaborations with organizations such as ESA, as well as with scientists, researchers, and astronauts. Through works including Planet Happiness, she explores how humans function under pressure, in isolation, and in space, and how connection, care, and shared experience remain vital. To preserve the authenticity and integrity of scientific knowledge, science in her work is never presented as fact alone, but is felt, embodied, and intuitively understood.
Studio Irma was founded in 2019 by Irma de Vries. Studio Irma’s journey has followed a long artistic path through the worlds of film, theatre, art, opera, and visual performance. Irma has had the honor of being educated by industry luminaries such as Peter Greenaway, Rineke Dijkstra, Shirin Neshat, Robert Wilson, and Peter Schneider. These influences shaped her sensitivity for storytelling, timing, light, and emotional layering, all elements that remain at the core of her work today.
Irma graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and began her career creating live visuals as a VJ, where image, rhythm, and emotion merged in real time.
Studio Irma installations have been experienced by millions of people worldwide, from Reflecting Forward at the Moco Museum in Amsterdam to large-scale installations in Barcelona, London, Brussels, Lisbon, and Braga, as well as presentations at international art fairs such as PAN Amsterdam.
With love,
Studio Irma
