Arts at CERN

The Barcelona City and Science Biennial presents the exhibition Arts at CERN: when arts and particle physics collide with commissioned works resulting from the artists’ time and research at CERN

Arts at CERN is the official arts program of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a unique laboratory in the world where some 14,000 particle physicists and physicists, engineers and engineers try to test the fundamental structure of the universe by pushing the most advanced technology to its limits.

Since 2012, the Laboratory’s arts programme has promoted dialogue between artists, scientists, and scientists in the framework of the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. Within this programme, since 2019, the Barcelona City Council and the Barcelona Institute of Culture ICUB have collaborated with CERN in the call for the Collide Residency Award, which promotes dialogue between art and science at the highest level. In the first edition of Collide in Barcelona, the winner of the award was Rosa Menkman. In the second edition, the winners were Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayawe from the Black Quantum Futurism collective.

This exhibition brings together some of the artistic works commissioned by Arts at CERN over the last few years, exploring how the great questions about our universe are pursued by fundamental science, and at the same time the arts and humanities are echoed in their practices. Particle physics and the arts are inextricably linked in the exciting pursuit of human knowledge.