Where are you feeling?

Butterflies in the stomach, a lump in the throat, goosebumps or a heavy heart. We feel with our whole body, yet often our emotional inner world remains hard to grasp, and even harder to describe.

In the virtual reality experience Soul Paint, you use the language of art to explore and express your feelings. Using color, shape, texture, and composition, you paint directly onto a virtual representation of your own body, turning embodied sensation into a personal artwork. Soul Paint has been created to encourage new forms of embodied insight, creating new languages to understand ourselves and each other.

Created by Niki Smit (NL) and Sarah Ticho (UK), with narration by Award-winning actor Rosario Dawson,Soul Paint has been co-created with behavioral scientists, patients and health care researchers. It exists as artwork, living research, and a tool for care - reimagining wellbeing as creative, embodied and collective.

In cooperation with the Mitteldeutschen Medienförderung (MDM)
With support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) - Science Year 2026