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6,000 Strips of Japanese Washi Tape Converge To Create a Curtain of Rainbows

By Sara Barnes on January 28, 2022

Tape Installation by Emmanuelle Moureaux

Photo: Daisuke Shima

Tokyo-based French architect and artist Emmanuelle Moureaux showcases tape like you’ve never seen it before. Her most recent colorful and dazzling installation, created in 2021, featured curtains of rainbows using the world-famous Japanese masking tape brand mt. The expansive piece comprised 6,000 thin washi tape strips that represented 100 different shades of color and featured parallel lines of the adhesive. The individual pieces were layered so that they appear to intersect and create a dense field of vibrant hues.

“It was magical,” Moureaux recalls to My Modern Met, “to feel with your entire body the rainbow moiré created by the 28 kilometers (17.3 miles) total length overlapping ‘100 colors.’”

Moureaux’s installation was designed to celebrate the annual “mt factory tour,” which had its 10th-anniversary last year. Over the course of two weeks in July and August, more than 11,000 people visited the mt factory and had the chance to enjoy Moureaux’s work in person.

The use of color and lines is in keeping with the artist's other installations that all fall under her 100 Colors series. In this ongoing collection of works, the large-scale pieces revolve around a 100-tone palette that, in the past, has featured the likes of dangling numbers, flowers, and the hiragana alphabet.