Light Echoes
Communicating scientific discovery across scales of time and space remains a fundamental challenge. Light Echoes is an exhibition and a research project proposing art as a vital medium through which complex astrophysical research can be observed, experienced and understood.
Bringing together artists, curators, and astrophysicists, the exhibition explores how the connection of light and time shapes our understanding of cosmic phenomena—from the expansion of the Universe and the observation of distant galaxies to stellar explosions and gravitational lensing. Through four installations and a surrounding soundscape, scientific knowledge unfolds as an experiential field and an immersive experience rather than a fixed imagery.
The exhibition’s title refers to the astronomical phenomenon of the light echo: light emitted by a stellar explosion, scattered into space, and later reflected by interstellar dust, reaching Earth again at a different time and from another direction. Appearing as a delayed mirror of the past, the light echo allows scientists to observe cosmic events more than once, across centuries. Within the exhibition, this phenomenon becomes both a scientific framework and a poetic metaphor—suggesting how knowledge itself returns, refracted through time, transformed by new methods, and reactivated through collaboration.
Conceived as a living research environment rather than a static display, the exhibition invites audiences to explore light and time as scientific tools for investigating how we perceive the Universe, suggesting that understanding how the cosmos functions can also help us reflect on humanity’s place within it—not as distant observers, but as participants in a dynamic system of shared inquiry.
Developed by the newly established Yonder Art•Science at the Niels Bohr Institute, Light Echoes unfolds as a constellation of interdisciplinary voices.
Participating Artists
Jo Verwohlt & Pieter Maria Steyaert (DK/BE)
Lea Porsager (DK)
Ligia Bouton (USA)
Semiconductor (UK)
The artists are working in dialogue with astrophysicists from the DARK Cosmology Centre research unit at the Niels Bohr Institute, including Jo Verwohlt, Jens Hjorth, Clara Ferreira Cores, Christa Gall, Marianne Vestergaard, Radosław Jan Wojtak, Judit Prat and William Baker among others.
“Light Echoes” is curated by Irene Campolmi, Curator at Large and Co-founder, Yonder Art•Science, Copenhagen and Curator for Art, Technology and Society at Amos Rex, Helsinki.
The exhibition has been made possible with support from the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Dr. N.P. Wieth-Knudsen Observatory Foundation, Villum Fonden and Augustinus Fonden.
Please note that the exhibition cannot be experienced at times when the Library Hall is temporarily closed due to events or during the construction of changing special exhibitions. Check our landing page rundetaarn.dk before your visit, where current closures will be listed at the top of the page.
