hajime sorayama and matt copson turn AFEELA car into artworks

AFEELA 1 art cars by hajime sorayama and matt copson

Sony Honda Mobility taps Hajime Sorayama and Matt Copson to turn its electric car AFEELA 1 into art vehicles. Each version of the car carries the work of the respective artist across its exterior, wheels, and interior screens, and these aren’t production models as they’re positioned as art objects. The company brought the Matt Copson’s car to Frieze Los Angeles in February 2026 and is set to host a second installation in Tokyo for Hajime Sorayama’s AFEELA 1 electric art vehicle starting March 14th, 2026.

The Tokyo installation shows the Japanese artist practice, whose career spans five decades of hyper-realistic illustration of robotic and mechanical forms. Hajime Sorayama’s recognized work is the visual design of AIBO, Sony’s consumer robot dog, which was first released in 1999. His method is built around surface, or the way light hits chrome and reflection creates the illusion of volume. His vehicle, named AFEELA Prototype Tuned Up by Hajime Sorayama, is built around the three themes of the artist’s retrospective exhibition: light, transparency, and reflection. All of these refer back to his decades-long artistic practice.

all images courtesy of Sony Honda Mobility

retroreflective lights and moiré effect as designs

For the AFEELA 1 electric car, artist Hajime Sorayama adds the moiré effect on the wheels, a pattern that appears when two regular grid structures overlap at a slight angle, producing a third pattern that moves as the viewer moves. On a wheel, then, the effect changes with every turn. The pattern is not printed but engineered into the surface geometry, allowing the tire to look differently depending on the angle of the light and the speed of the car. The exhibition opens at CREATIVE MUSEUM TOKYO on March 14th, 2026, on the sixth floor of the Toda Building in Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, and runs through May 31st.

Before Hajime Sorayama’s AFEELA 1 electric art car, Sony Honda Mobility has already tapped artist and director Matt Copson for a previous iteration. Given his practice on light and motion across film and installation, he turned the surface of the electric vehicle into a canvas with retroreflective lights, the ones used on emergency vehicles and road signage, across the exterior of the car, creating illuminated splash patterns all over the surface. The artist’s work also extended the work into the car’s interior, as he put his own twist into the AFEELA 1 Media Bar, which runs across the dashboard, and the Panoramic Screen. Matt Copson’s AFEELA 1 electric art car appeared during the Frieze Los Angeles installation, which ran from February 26th to March 1st at Santa Monica Airport. The same model is set to appear at Frieze New York, running from May 13th to 17 that The Shed in Manhattan.

view of Hajime Sorayama’s AFEELA 1 electric art car