Arts at CERN

Armin Linke works with photography and film by setting up processes that question the medium, its technologies, narrative structures, and complicities within wider socio-political structures.

His oeuvre functions as a collection of tools for demystifying different design strategies and languages. In a collective approach with other creatives, researchers and scientists, the narratives of his works expand on the level of multiple discourses, centring the questions of installation and display.

Linke’s artistic exploration of research environments spans over twenty years. The artist first visited CERN in 2000. His photographs of the computer centre showed its material infrastructure and technology, revealing these largely invisible landscapes and capturing CERN’s computing history. Since then, he has continued his engagement with the Laboratory returning to develop several projects.

His works have been exhibited internationally. His installation Alpi won the special prize at the 2004 Venice Biennale of Architecture and Image Capital was awarded the Kubus.Sparda Art Prize in 2019. Recent solo exhibitions include: Image Capital (with Estelle Blaschke), Centre Pompidou, Paris, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Eschborn/Frankfurt, MAST, Bologna, and Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2022-2023; Earth Indices. Processing the Anthropocene (with Giulia Bruno), HKW, Berlin, 2022. Former MIT Visual Arts Program research affiliate, guest professor at the IUAV Arts and Design University in Venice, professor of photography at the Karlsruhe University for Arts and Design, artist in residence at the KHI Florenz, Linke is currently a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and a guest professor at ISIA Urbino.