Light Echoes brings together artists, curators, and astrophysicists to explore how light and time shape our understanding of the cosmos. Through four installations and an immersive soundscape, the exhibition transforms complex astrophysical research โ including the expansion of the Universe, distant galaxy observation, stellar explosions, and gravitational lensing โ into an experiential field audiences can directly engage with.
The exhibition's title draws on the astronomical concept of the light echo: light emitted during a stellar explosion that scatters into space, reflects off interstellar dust, and reaches Earth again from a different direction and at a later time. This delayed mirror of past cosmic events allows scientists to observe the same phenomenon more than once, across centuries. Within the exhibition, this becomes both a scientific framework and a poetic metaphor for how knowledge itself returns, refracted and transformed through time.
The participating artists โ Jo Verwohlt & Pieter Maria Steyaert (DK/BE), Lea Porsager (DK), Ligia Bouton (USA), and Semiconductor (UK) โ developed their works in direct dialogue with astrophysicists from the DARK Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute, including Jens Hjorth, Clara Ferreira Cores, Christa Gall, Marianne Vestergaard, Radosลaw Jan Wojtak, Judit Prat, and William Baker, among others.
The exhibition is curated by Irene Campolmi, Curator at Large and Co-founder of Yonder ArtโขScience, Copenhagen, and Curator for Art, Technology and Society at Amos Rex, Helsinki. It is conceived as a living research environment rather than a static display, inviting visitors to reflect on humanity's place within a dynamic cosmic system.
Light Echoes is hosted in the Library Hall (Bibliotekssalen) at Rundetaarn (The Round Tower), Kรธbmagergade 52 A, 1150 Copenhagen K, and is part of the LIGHT YEAR 2026 programme.