Exhibitions & Events

Inaugurated in 2023, CERN's new centre for science, education, and culture hosts Exploring the Unknown, which manifests as a fertile meeting ground where art and science dialogue. The show presents four new art commissions by Julius von Bismarck, Chloé Delarue, Ryoji Ikeda, and Yunchul Kim. As residents of Arts at CERN, their artistic practices have been nourished by their time at the Laboratory in dialogue with physicists.

The Arts at CERN and CERN Exhibitions team joined forces to bring to the public an exhibition designed to inspire curiosity and wonder about the universe’s unanswered questions. Curated by Mónica Bello, head of Arts at CERN, and Iliana Tatsi, curator of the CERN Exhibitions team, the three main themes of Exploring the Unknown – Space & Time, the Void (the Quantum Vacuum), and the Invisible (Dark Matter) – are introduced by CERN theoretical physicists who share their fascinations and challenges in their creative quest to investigate the limits of our knowledge.

DARK MATTERS is an exhibition in collaboration with Science Gallery Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics. DARK MATTERS is an exhibition in collaboration with Arts at CERN and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics. The exhibition aims to  explore the fundamental essence of life and the universe, and how so much of it remains a mystery to us. 

Through local and international experimental projects, including artworks from Arts at CERN programmes, the exhibition explores life and all the dark matter that flows through it, under it and collides with it.

DARK MATTERS is co-curated by Mónica Bello, Head of Arts at CERN and Tilly Boleyn, Head of Curatorial at Science Gallery Melbourne in collaboration with a curatorial panel of young people.

Arts at CERN collaborates with Copenhagen Contemporary’s exhibition Yet, it moves!, alongside DARK, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen; the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, and the Program in Performance Studies, University of California, Davis, ModLab (Digital Humanities Laboratory). The exhibition explores the theme of motion as an omnipresent phenomenon, raising our awareness of the many complex movement patterns in which we are all entangled. The exhibition features work by CERN artists in residence, including Ryoji Ikeda and Black Quantum Futurism.

Participating artists: Ryoji Ikeda, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Jenna Sutela, Ligia Bouton, Helene Nymann, Nina Nowak, Jens Settergren, Black Quantum Futurism, Cecilia Bengolea, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and Nora Turato.

Exploring its origins, adaptations and reinventions over 157 years, the V&A’s landmark exhibition in 2021, Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, charts the evolution of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from a manuscript to a global phenomenon beloved by all ages.

The journey through Wonderland delves into Alice’s origins and explores its cultural impact across film, performance, fashion, art, music and photography. Entering the final exhibition’s part, Quantumland, the show presents Mariele Neudecker’s art commission, The Eye [A.L.I.C.E. | A Large Ion Collider Experiment | V1], and Iris van Herpen’s Infinity dress as powerful expressions of the scientific and artistic imagination, as well as their contemporary Alice-like curiosity.

Armin Linke and Estelle Blaschke’s project Image Capital explores the history and the present of photography as information technology, featuring CERN science and history. CERN and its community have supported the research for the project, which was coordinated by Arts at CERN through Armin Linke’s participation in the Guest Artists programme.

The exhibition features artworks by Semiconductor and Yunchul Kim, former CERN artists in residence, Ralf Baecker and Richard Vijgen that capture, reveal and imagine the unseen processes constantly at work in the world around us.

As part of the Barcelona Science Biennale 2021, the exhibition Arts at CERN: when art and particle physics collide at CosmoCaixa includes four works of art developed after the artists' research and work in the Laboratory. These works explore how the big questions about our universe are pursued by fundamental science, while showing how particle physics and arts are inextricably linked in the exciting search for human knowledge. The exhibition is curated by Head of Arts at CERN Mónica Bello and the Barcelona City and Science Biennial Curators, Irma Vilà and Pau Alsina.

Participating artists: Alan Bogana, June Baltahazard & Pierre Pauze, Rosa Menkman Semiconductor.

The international touring exhibition Quantum/Broken Symmetries began at Collide International, the programme of Arts at CERN in collaboration with FACT Liverpool between 2016 and 2018. The exhibition brings together artists who were invited to reside at CERN to advance their artistic practise by establishing dialogues with particle physicists, engineers, IT experts and staff. 

Quantum/Broken Symmetries is curated by Mónica Bello and José-Carlos Mariátegui, and is co-produced by ScANNER (the Science and Art Network for New Exhibitions and Research), composed of Arts at CERN; FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool); CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona); le lieu unique (Center for Contemporary Culture – Nantes) and iMAL (interactive Media Arts Laboratory, Brussels). ScANNER was initiated through the Collide International (2016-2018). 

Between 2018-2021, the exhibition (adapted to each museum) was shown at FACT (Liverpool, UK), CCCB (Barcelona, Spain), iMAL (Brussels, Belgium), le lieu unique (Nantes, France), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung, Taiwan) and Kumu Art Museum (Tallinn, Estonia). 

Participating artists: Suzanne Treister, Julieta Aranda, Semiconductor, Diann Bauer, James Bridle, Yunchul Kim, Mariele Neudecker, Alan Bogana, Yu-Chen Wang, Juan Cortés, Lea Porsager, Haroon Mirza & Jack Jelfs.