KYA LOU is a colorist who lives and works in Los Angeles.

Formerly trained as an artist at UCLA, Kya uses her background in sculpture and photography to inform her perspectives on color. Her work combines the technical components of images with textural surfaces found in various materials. With each project, she seeks to locate the depths of every frame and build palettes that support the narrative.

Prior to pursuing color full time, Kya found work as an editor and collaborated with Kahlil Joseph on BLKNWS, an ongoing conceptual news program that takes the form of a two channel installation.

In 2017, she started to develop COLOURED ONLY, a color grading studio committed to proposing radical alternatives within post production. In 2020, she took a leap of faith and focused on COLOURED ONLY full-time.

Lou was the colorist for the short film, A Love Song For Latasha (2019), directed by Sophia Nahli Allison which was nominated for an Oscar in 2021. Her experience working on the film was formative to the development of her practice and how she sources reference materials. Her output has been seen in films that have traveled as far as the Blackstar Film Festival, La Biennale Di Venezia, The Whitney Biennial, Tribeca and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Notable projects include the 2022 Emmy nominated Pachinko Title Sequence and If I Go, Will They Miss Me which won the Short Film Grandy Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

As a colorist, she has lent her skillset to a wide spectrum of directors, cinematographers and artists including SOPHIA NAHLI ALLISON, MALIK SAYEED, ADAM PENDLETON, VINCENT HAYCOCK, SARA DUNLOP, RUBBERBAND., CHARLES TODD, NATALIE RAE, PETRA COLLINS, JOSHUA KISSI, DIME DAVIS, JAZMIN GARCIA, TERENCE NANCE, WALTER THOMPSON-HERNANDEZ and JANICZA BRAVO to name a few.

Commercially, she has worked on campaigns for Adidas, Amazon, Beats, Calvin Klein, Credit Karma, Google, Hyundai, Nike, On Running, Old Spice, Snapchat, Square, Toyota, Telfar, The New York Times, VRBO, Wales Bonner, Whatsapp and many more. In 2022, she was nominated for an AICP “Best Color Grading” award for her work on Square campaign directed by the duo RUBBERBAND.

In her downtime, she can be found cataloging her extensive library of vinyl, cassette tapes and rare books. Kya is currently developing a series of projects that convene her interests in color theory and spiritual metadata.