The micro- and macrouniverses have always been directly connected: the building blocks of which our home planet Earth — and we ourselves — are composed were created either shortly after the Big Bang or through nuclear fusions inside stars that exploded as supernovae and hurled their material into space. At CERN, exploring this relationship is at the centre of the work. Here sits the world’s largest particle accelerator, with which a state resembling that shortly after the Big Bang can theoretically be produced.

Since 2012, the outreach programme art@CMS/ORIGIN has been linking the scientific community around the CMS particle detector with artists, art students, and art teachers, to inspire as many people as possible for particle physics. As part of the course Interdisziplinäre Räume 2, a group of students from IEM – Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics travelled in January 2026 to the SciArt Dialogue Week 2026 at CERN, organised by art@CMS/ORIGIN. Also on the trip was a student from Australia’s RMIT University. The experiences and insights gathered there formed the point of departure for the works now presented for the first time as part of the Supernova exhibition.

Artists: Joseph Böhm, Francesco Casanova, Cornelius Grömminger, I–A, Lain Iwakura, Joris Kindler, Pablo Knupfer, Gemma Lambourne, Artem Sivashenko, and Zlata Zhidkova.

Concept, project management: Anke Eckardt
Idea, concept, journalistic accompaniment: Susanna Niedermayr
Head of art@CMS/ORIGIN, CERN: Michael Hoch
With thanks to Lea Sonnek, Dominik Lekavski, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.