Macau in Light and Shadow: Painting the Art Capital of the Starry Night

By Photographer Memo Rui

Macau, a city that never sleeps, everyone knows its glamorous surface—the neon-lit casinos and luxury hotels along the Cotai Strip, the all-night shopping streets and steaming food stalls. Yet Macau preserves the richest traditional culture and a wealth of modern historical buildings, its contemporary face often misunderstood and overlooked. Though small in size, Macau holds contemporary art in high esteem, boasting artists and venues from around the world, numerous large exhibition spaces and influential independent galleries, and even luxury hotels that pride themselves on collecting and displaying large art collections.

First, let me share some tips for visiting Macau, primarily related to pandemic prevention. Currently, the COVID-19 situation in Macau is relatively under control, and tourists can visit with confidence. Mainland travelers with a valid negative nucleic acid test result within 7 days can travel to and from Macau without quarantine, provided they meet Macau’s epidemic prevention requirements. Please rest assured.

So for this trip to Macau, we temporarily left the sunny daytime and strolled through the streets at nightfall, following the well-planned “Macau Light Festival” to embark on an interesting light-seeking journey.

The Light Festival is the highlight of this season’s Macau travel. The tourism mascot “Mak Mak” is scattered across the city, spreading its little wings to guide us along several light-seeking routes. The first stop is naturally the most popular—Rua do Cunha.

A church of light stands in the square of Rua do Cunha, with traditional Portuguese patterns and dazzling blue-and-white light merging among the greenery and old buildings. Inside the church is a large crystal ball. Children turn a huge wind-up key, a rainbow horse spins inside the crystal ball, and music plays melodiously all around. Their eyes are full of curiosity. We feel as if we have fallen into Lilliput, with everything around us so dreamlike.

The building facades are also illuminated by light painting, with musical notes bouncing up and down the stairs. These candy-colored traditional buildings, already beautiful during the day, are completely transformed at night.

Elaborately designed videos and digital images flow across the walls with dynamic music, mostly introducing the evolution of Macau’s history, culture, and art. The colors are extremely vivid, and every frame feels like a painting.

A tunnel of light takes us to Tap Seac Square, where the Macau Cultural Affairs Bureau building becomes the brightest spot on the square. Nearly 100 meters long, it stages a light show every 15 minutes—a series of visually striking compositions that I absolutely love. The theme here is called “Light and Music Box.”

There’s also the Dream Circus in Fátima Parish and the Candy Kingdom theme in Nam Van, both perfect spots for tourists to stop and take photos.

Especially at Nam Van, you can see the Macau Tower adorned with lights and the vibrant night view of the peninsula. With the sea breeze blowing, let the night flow by.

Now let’s move indoors—a must-visit in winter: the teamLab SuperNature Macau exhibition at The Venetian Macau. We pressed the shutter countless times—it’s such a great place for photos.

Tip: About teamLab SuperNature. This exhibition in Macau covers 5,000 square meters, featuring multiple super-large-scale artworks that offer a new immersive interactive experience. It gathers many popular works, including “Flower and People’s Valley: Lost, Immersed and Reborn,” “Infinite Crystal Universe,” “Animals II Born from Flowers,” and “Graffiti Nature – High Altitude Red List.” These works create a vast space for participants to explore new perceptions of nature, humanity, and the world, immersing the whole body in the works, creating and ultimately merging with them.

First, at the entrance, there is “Flower and People’s Valley: Lost, Immersed and Reborn.” Flowers bloom over an entire year, changing their growth locations with the seasons. They go through birth, growth, budding, blooming, and eventually withering, fading, and dying. That is, flowers eternally repeat the cycle from birth to death. If viewers stand still, the flowers around them grow more and continue to bloom. If viewers touch or step on the flowers, they wither and die at once.

Next, the area we most longed for in this experience: “Infinite Crystal Universe.” This three-dimensional work created by accumulated light points feels like a time-travel scene with an endlessly expanding sculpture of light. Instantly, I felt as if I owned the entire universe—a galaxy of stars and time arranged, with us at the center. The fun part is that we can use our phones to select elements to display, and space, time, light, and shadow interact, forever in endless change.

“Light Sculpture – Flat” uses laser beams mirrored on the ground to reconstruct space into a three-dimensional sculpture. We are the only uncertain factor, moving in and out to break the beam composition, interacting, blending—a dazzling, sonorous scene of mesmerizing light space.

My friends and I took lots of photos here, all incredibly happy. This huge “body-immersive” experience space allows everyone to explore new perceptions of nature, humanity, and the world through a group of works, immersing together in this world and using their conscious bodies to create their own world.

Reluctantly leaving teamLab SuperNature, we step back into the mundane world—strolling leisurely in the night of Rua do Cunha. The densely packed alleys are filled with moving figures, and a bistro emits the lively rhythm of jazz.

Among the colorful old houses, a large tree sways gently in the wind, rustling. Suddenly I feel a deep desire to experience Macau’s night more intimately.

In Carmo Parish, a bus rushes through a green light, a couple walks hand in hand on the street, an older man walks with head down in thought, a woman sits by the roadside smoking, a motorcycle roars past.

At a street corner bathed in thick yellow light, a girl turns around smiling. By now, Macau has entered the deep night. Strolling along, everything I see makes me feel for a moment that I have traveled to Europe. How could the light of day know the depth of night? I realize I have grown fond of this place…

Macau in dazzling, illusory light—you need to feel every corner’s charm with your heart. It’s like reading a storybook that never ends. Every street, every detail holds delightful surprises that make you linger. Macau’s glamour and nostalgia, its freshness and elegance, its beautiful scenery and food—all leave a deep impression. This complex yet inclusive city deserves a slow wander and discovery...