Arts at CERN

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Arts at CERN

We foster dialogue between artists and CERN scientists through residencies, commissions, and exhibitions
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Arts at CERN was founded in 2011 to explore notions of creativity, human ingenuity and curiosity. Today, artists from all over the world are invited, through our programmes, to spend time at CERN and work alongside particle physicists and engineers. Positioning artists and scientists together within the larger scientific context, our programmes foster new approaches to research, experimentation an

d artistic production. Furthermore, we want to question how art and culture can form novel visions of a highly specialised environment and what common grounds can be shared between art and science.

05/06/2026

Through Arts at CERN’s global network, artists have experienced landscapes ranging from deserts to mountains, home to observatories and scientific laboratories dedicated to understanding our world and what lies far beyond it.

Beyond the cutting-edge research conducted in these places, they provide a setting for explorations, reminding us of the vastness, diversity, and fragility of the natural world that sustains us all.

1–3: Atacama desert, Northern Chile. Connect Chile residency, 2023. Photos: Dominique Koch
4–5: Jungfraujoch Sphinx Observatory, Switzerland. Connect Argentina residency, 2026. Photos: Xenia Harder | CERN
6–7: Carnarvon and SALT (Southern African Largest Telescope) in Sutherland, South Africa. Connect South Africa residency, 2021

30/05/2026

Join us tonight, Saturday 30 May for the Nuit des Musées!

For this special occasion, the will be open from 6pm to 11pm.

If you haven’t had the chance yet, come and visit Exploring the Unknown - an exhibition investigating the ambiguous relationship between technology and the ever-increasing complexity of knowledge.

On view are works by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus, Chloé Delarue , Ryoji Ikeda , and Yunchul Kim , developed following their residencies at Arts at CERN.

As residents of , their artistic practices have been nourished by their immersion in the Laboratory’s environment and the dialogues with CERN scientists on theories and ongoing experiments seeking to describe the nature of reality.

Also on display is a series of interviews with CERN scientists and the artists, expanding on this: they dive into themes such as space-time, dark matter, the voice, invisibility, and uncertainty - examining what these phenomena and concepts are, how they are studied scientifically, and how they have profoundly influenced the artists’ research and practice.

‘Exploring the Unknown’ reflects Arts at CERN’s commitment, since 2018, to supporting artistic productions, that bring together artists and physicists to foster a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment where art and science can enter into dialogue, and new ideas and approaches can be explored.

Credit: Chloé Delarue, TAFAA – TINA UNFOLLOW ALICE, 2023. Photo: Marina Cavazza.

ExploringTheUnknown

20/05/2026

Diego Tonus (.tonus): The Excavation of Thought

The Excavation of Thought (2026) is a series investigating the notion of representational landscape through processes of material extraction. The work originates from a found and damaged 35mm film strip of unknown provenance depicting labourers excavating at a mining site.

Rather than restoring the film, the project treats its celluloid surface as a landscape of erosion. Through robotic cinematography and machine-vision techniques - methods typically used to detect imperceptible events in particle physics - the film’s damaged surface is examined simultaneously as image and material object.

Central to the work is the decision not to fully develop the 35mm film. Its surface is instead treated as a site where materiality, hidden information, and partial legibility emerge through abstraction. The transformation of this material into a new film production and a series of large-scale graphene monotype prints generates both the representation of a landscape and carbon-based objects capable of functioning as conductors and energy accumulators.

The film strip operates not only as an image carrier, but as an object of investigation, connecting the advanced material’s mnemonic properties to the deteriorating analogue memory of film.

Diego Tonus’s research trip at as Guest Artist supported by Mondriaan Fonds ()

Credits 📸: DT Studio

19/05/2026

Within his artistic practice, Diego Tonus (.tonus) uses reproduction as a means to question control systems and power structures. He transforms selected images, objects, and collective experiences, placing them within new frameworks to expose their underlying codes and forms of normativity.

This approach defines a time- and process-based production articulated through sculpture, film, photography, and performance. Across these media, his practice treats archiving as an active gesture rather than an act of preservation. What is collected, ordered, or omitted becomes structural, allowing reproduction to disclose how meaning is formed, transmitted, and withheld through the politics of materials chosen, their sourcing, and use.

During his research trip at as Guest Artist, Diego Tonus observed infrastructures and robotic imaging technologies for exploring inaccessible landscapes and for representing subatomic particles, and to inquire about advanced materials. The latter opened further reflections into their implications for future technological devices, particularly in high-speed memory and energy storage systems shaping the future of memory through accelerated velocity of data sharing and storage. The dialogues with CERN scientists will inform the production of a film based on using robotic scanning and a series of large graphene monotype prints - an advanced material serving simultaneously as a carrier of memory and energy.

The research trip was supported by Mondriaan Fonds ()

1-3: Visit of the Material Lab, guided by Stefano Sgobba, Section Leader of Materials, Metrology & NDT and Katie Buchanan.
4: Analysis of Tonus’s example film in the scanner of the Emulsion Scanning Lab with Vincenzo Boccia, Vasilis Chariton and Daniele Centanni
5: Data Centre with Michael Davis, Tape Archive and Backups section leader, and Giulia Bini, Head of Arts at CERN
7-8: Robotics Workshop with Chris McGreavy and Hannes Gamper
9: CERN’s Archive with Head Archivist Olivia Mandica-Hart

13/05/2026

🔗Amanda E. Metzger - 𝚫 (delta) 🔗

From April 23 to April 30 2026, .gallery presented the exhibition 𝚫 (delta) by Amanda E. Metzger (.e.metzger) developed as part of Connect, Arts at CERN’s residency programme in collaboration with .

Amanda E. Metzger’s practice revolves around network theory, authorship and seemingly unquantifiable data collection. Her work explores how memories are made, measured, and shared, with an interest in the possibility of creating a multi-bodied, decentralised common consciousness relying on information sharing and the reconstruction of memories.

During her Connect residency at CERN, Amanda E. Metzger was in close dialogue with scientists working on the algorithmic reconstruction of data from particle events. Conversations on the gap between an event in spacetime and our perception of it were fundamental in the development of this work. She addresses the impossibility of fully reconstructing events and the notion that some information is inevitably unaccounted for, questioning how perception shapes reality even at the level of particles, and which discrepancies can emerge when recording, mediating and distributing memories.

The exhibition examined the effects of data as abstraction, asking what the resulting difference (𝚫) between reality and what is displaced or inaccessible in the process of making data, and in the formation of personal memories.

𝚫 (delta) can be accessed on mobile phones through delta.metzger.love. It exists as a web-based soundscape that can be collectively experienced anywhere, unfolding when four or more people are gathered together in a large space, and features a musical composition created in collaboration with Lucien Guy Montandon ().

Photo credits 📸: Galya Feierman (), , Courtesy the artist

30/04/2026

✨Congratulations to Morehshin Allahyari () and Wendi Yan (), Honorary Mentions of Collide Stockholm – Arts at CERN’s international residency award, in partnership with the .

Morehshin Allahyari is an artist and an Assistant Professor of Digital Media Art at Stanford University. She uses 3D simulation, video, code, sculpture, digital fabrication and archival practices to re-figure myth and history, weaving together counternarratives of Western technological colonialism in the context of the Middle East and North Africa.

Allahyari’s project, which reconfigures computational machines by drawing on automata from the Islamic Golden Era, revisits histories of technological innovation and mechanical intelligence with imaginative potential and aesthetic vision.

Wendi Yan is an artist who uses CGI, game engines, and conceptual sculpture to probe the artifice of knowledge and engage with transcultural narratives in science and technology. Her practice explores the possibilities of worldbuilding and metafictional simulation as poetic tools for speculative epistemologies, imagining alternative historical timelines in the psychogeography of the East and West.

Yan’s transdisciplinary proposal bridges scholarly depth with current techno-scientific discourses through emerging digital aesthetics.

The two artists were awarded an Honorary Mention by the jury in recognition of the outstanding quality of their proposals. is the recipient of the Collide Stockholm residency award.

Credits:
Morehshin Allahyari: 📸 Chani Bockwinkel
Wendi Yan: 📸 Jessica Chou

collidestockholm

28/04/2026

We are excited to announce that Emilija Škarnulytė () is the recipient of Collide Stockholm, Arts at CERN’s international residency award, in partnership with the Nobel Prize Museum ().

Emilija Škarnulytė’s practice explores infrastructures that mediate between the visible and the invisible, the human and the post-human, the present and the deep temporal. Her work engages with sites such as decommissioning nuclear power plants, deep-sea data storage prototypes, neutrino observatories, and geological formations shaped by technological intervention.

CERN () and the Nobel Prize () share a commitment to advancing knowledge and recognising scientific breakthroughs. Building on this common legacy, Collide Stockholm supports the development of an artwork that engages with both contexts.

🌟Congratulations Emilija! 🌟

In recognition of the outstanding quality of the proposals, the jury also decided to award two Honorary Mentions to Morehshin Allahyari () and Wendi Yan () for the conceptual and critical depth demonstrated in their proposed projects. Congratulations to all the awardees!

Read more on the announcement via the link in bio 🔗

Credits:
Emilija Škarnulytė: 📸 Diana Luganski
Morehshin Allahyari: 📸 Chani Bockwinkel
Wendi Yan: 📸 Jessica Chou

23/04/2026

A heartfelt thank you to the 908 artists and collectives from 89 countries who applied for , Arts at CERN’s international residency award, in partnership with the Nobel Prize Museum !

The response to our open call was nothing short of impressive ✨We received outstanding submissions in both breadth and quality, showcasing bold approaches to science and technology and their cultural and societal impact.

Stay tuned: the recipient of the Collide Stockholm award and Honorary Mentions will be announced on Tuesday, April 28!

In the meantime, meet the jury:

Clara Åhlvik (), Director of Exhibition, Nobel Prize Museum
Giulia Bini (), Head of Arts at CERN
Daniel Birnbaum (.birnbaum), Curator and Professor of Philosophy at the Städelschule, Frankfurt
Ulf Danielsson, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Secretary of Nobel Committee for Physics
Helga Timko, Accelerator physicist at CERN and member of CERN Cultural Board

CollideStockholm

09/04/2026

Rohini Devasher presents her new film ‘From the Dust of this Planet: A Theory Apparatus for the Observer’, commissioned by Diriyah Biennale Foundation (biennale_sa), at ‘In Interludes and Transitions’, the third Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale () (January 30 – May 2 2026).

Developed following her 2023 Connect India residency at and , the work draws on philosopher Eugene Thacker’s book In the Dust of This Planet, which frames the planet as a site of horror, an “unthinkable world” which is ultimately uknowable.

Blending science fiction, ancient non-western cosmological texts, post humanist philosophy, quantum physics, cosmology, and lived astronomical observation, the work destabilises the observer’s presumed neutrality. Music plays an essential role in revealing a deeply embodied, entangled dialogue between object and observer.

For Devasher, the limits of observation and representation function as openings into alternative modes of perception and understanding.

“Evoking wonder and horror by turns, the planet emerges not as a mute, inert object adrift in space, but as a generative, relational, and even sentient body—capable of producing phenomena that resist complete empirical observation or quantification. Shape-shifting between object and compound lens, it is both a physical entity and an instrument of perception, suggesting that representation is always partial, always haunted.”

Photo credits: Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026, Courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation

02/04/2026

➡️ Meet Juan Sorrentino: one of our Connect Argentina residents

Based in Buenos Aires, Juan Sorrentino is a sound artist and researcher whose practice merges natural forces, architecture, and vibration. His work centres on relationships between matter and the sonic memory of materials, exploring sound as a physical phenomenon. Conceptually informed by the Cherenkov Tank, Juan is developing a project that will create a perceptual environment by transforming cosmic data into sonic and visual forms, rendering otherwise imperceptible phenomena experientially perceptible.

During his Connect Argentina residency, Juan collaborated with experts in astrophysics, particle physics and theoretical physics to explore new sound materializations. By recording low-frequency signals released by pulsars, neutrinos and subatomic collision using geophones, infrasound microphones, and hydrophones in water tanks, he expanded his investigations of inaudible frequencies beyond conventional architectural and sculptural spaces and into subatomic and astronomical domains.

Juan completed a dual residency at and with fellow resident .manz, furthering their practice by engaging with fundamental research and the scientific communities in Argentina and Geneva.

Connect Argentina is part of Connect, the collaboration framework between Arts at CERN and , organised in partnership with , by and Fundación Williams.

Artist portrait 📸: Marina Cavazza

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