Tania Candiani

In 2022, Tania Candiani conducted a residency with Arts at cern, the program for artists of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s most important scientific research centers, dedicated to discovering what the universe is made of and how it functions. Candiani’s research developed into the project Quantum Prelude—which also forms part of this exhibition—and the piece Supersymmetry, in the muac’s reflecting pool. In physics, supersymmetry is a theory that could explain the nature of dark matter. According to the quantum equations that describe their behavior, each known particle has a certain symmetry with another. Candiani was inspired by one of the photographic negatives from the early experiments at cern, in which it became possible to see tiny, hitherto invisible particles through photon bombardment. In this piece, aluminum structures are arranged in the reflecting pool to configure the paths and movements of subatomic particles.