In October 2025 The Bentway presented SOLAR, a new large-scale light installation by Italian artist Quayola and commissioned in partnership with Videocittà, Rome’s celebrated festival of video and digital culture.

As long summer nights give way to early fall dusk, SOLAR took inspiration from the optical phenomena of twilight – including crepuscular rays and chromatic gradients – recreating the fleeting beauty of the moments when night and day converge. The work was guided by a robotic arm, sweeping slowly across the night sky, guiding hundreds of synchronized beams in a mesmerizing dance of light and shadow. Translating the sun’s daily path from rise to set into a series of artist-created algorithmic gestures and glowing orbits, the piece merged the sun’s cycles with digital choreography to support a new living atmosphere: immersive and ever-changing.  

Presented as a simulated sunset unfolding in real time, SOLAR offered an alternate way of experiencing the city – slowed down, bathed in colour, and suspended between nature and technology. Presented beneath the Gardiner Expressway, where shade is constant, this radiant new work reminded us of the sun’s power, how light shapes our sense of time and place, and that every shadow has its source.