Artistic representations of quantum physics

Quantum physics is overturning our classical conceptions of reality. To enable as many people as possible to grasp this scientific revolution, the exhibition L'Atelier quantique engages in an unprecedented dialogue between science, art and philosophy. This interdisciplinary approach poses a fundamental question : can we represent the invisible world described by quantum physics without betraying its nature ?
Interview with Aurore ^Young*, physicist at the Collège de France and scientific curator of the exhibition.

Highly mathematical, quantum physics is a science that describes microscopic particles whose actual behavior remains inaccessible to our senses. While mathematical language is essential for researchers, it also makes it difficult for the general public to understand the discipline and grasp the issues involved. Against this backdrop, a number of initiatives aim to reactivate the links between knowledge and sensibility. This is the ambition of L'Atelier quantique, an exhibition at the Collège de France designed to enable as many people as possible to grasp some of the concepts of quantum physics, a discipline often perceived as both fascinating and inaccessible, combining mathematical abstraction, conceptual strangeness and remoteness from the senses.

The project was born of a friendship.   A friend from preparatory school, Caroline Delétoille, was becoming a painter at the same time as I was going back to school," says physicist Aurore Young. Then, when we met Céline Boisserie-Lacroix, a philosopher specializing in exchanges between science and the visual arts, we decided that art would be an interesting gateway to quantum physics ". From this meeting was born the idea of a joint exhibition, presented in spring 2025 under the name Sensation quantique at the Institut Henri-Poincaré. This autumn, the exhibition comes to life in a revisited version at the Collège de France, L'Atelier quantique, and at Centquatre-Paris, each of the two venues highlighting a complementary facet of the initial project.

This ambitious idea is based on the need to " find a common language between philosophy, art and science ", a task that all three recognize as one of the project's major challenges. Far from being a simple exercise in popularization, L'Atelier quantique explores the conditions for translating a mathematical world into a sensitive one, without betraying scientific rigor. The aim is " to use emotion to arouse the visitor's curiosity, and then encourage him or her to read the mediation panels", says Aurore Young.

A doctoral student at the Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel, Aurore Young works at the frontier between theory and experimentation. Every day, she interacts with extremely precise optical devices designed to trap atoms using lasers and place them in particular quantum states. " We put the atoms close together, then send them into a so-called Rydberg state to see how they interact ", she explains. The aim is to create a form of " synthetic matter ", enabling us to simulate the behaviour of real materials, and to better understand phenomena that are still poorly understood, such as superconductivity, defined by the absence of electrical resistance in certain materials. But while experimental rigor is at the heart of this research, the very nature of quantum objects prevents any direct apprehension. The physicist points out that " to say that an object is in a superposition of states is a mathematical way of describing it, but we can never observe it as it is. With each measurement, we disturb the system ". This constitutive invisibility is the tipping point through which art can interrogate science by exploring forms of metaphorical representation of the concepts of quantum physics.

Science as a sensitive experience

The heart of the exhibition project lies in a bold analogy : comparing quantum superposition to the plurality of memories. " A quantum object can exist, before any measurement, in several states at once. But as soon as we measure it, it will freeze in one state. Similarly, a memory is never unambiguous: each time it is recalled, the memory reassembles and reconstructs it ", describes Aurore Young. A memory can take many forms, depending on the point of view adopted. The main installation in the exhibition, for example, features a family dinner, reconstructed from old photographs. Caroline Delétoille has produced several paintings depicting the same scene from different angles, inspired by photographic archives from the Musée Nicéphore-Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône. Visitors are invited to mentally reconstitute the totality of the memory, " as one reconstructs a quantum state by tomography ", i.e. by aggregating multiple partial measurements. This precise, limited gesture of analogy makes the probabilistic essence of quantum mechanics tangible, without reducing it to a simplistic image.

Aware of the potential for misinterpretation, the team was keen to establish a number of safeguards. " We didn't want visitors to think that memory really works in a quantum way ", insists Aurore Young. Quantum physics is an extremely rigorous field, and its concepts, though sometimes poetic, obey precise mathematical laws. Any attempt at analogy must assume its limits. Our ambition is not to reduce one to the other, but to make a mathematical intuition tangible through a familiar image. This project is also an opportunity for art to enter the laboratory. Caroline Delétoille has carried out several residencies, notably at the Collège de France and in a Vancouver laboratory, to " paint science " in the making. This is a rare gesture, for, as Aurore Young recalls , " few artists have depicted quantum physics laboratories. Yet there is a real beauty in research ". What's at stake here is not so much the faithful reproduction of a technical universe as the aesthetic intuition of emerging forms : electronic clouds, superpositions of states, networks of atoms trapped by light. In this way, survival blankets - used in his laboratory to stabilize laser temperatures by blocking out windows - become pictorial matter. The laboratory is no longer simply a place where knowledge is produced, but a symbolic space permeated by aesthetic and existential questions.

A space for interdisciplinary translation

The exhibition presents itself as a laboratory of interpretation, at the interface of languages. This is where philosopher Céline Boisserie-Lacroix plays a central role. " She represents this interface between the language of scientists and that of artists ", explains Aurore Young. Her role is to clarify the concepts used, to guarantee the coherence of the discourse, but also to propose fruitful conceptual articulations. After all, bridges between art and science are nothing new. The history of scientific representation abounds in mutual borrowings, from Renaissance perspective to modernist abstraction. What the project brings up to date is the possibility of a rigorous dialogue between practices, both rooted in laboratories and open to the public arena. The exhibition fully assumes its sensitive dimension. For example, a set of photographic portraits of an anonymous woman from the years 1940, reworked by Caroline Delétoille, are transformed into figures of multiple electrons, embodying another quantum metaphor, that of a particle in search of itself.

While not all the artistic works are presented in the exhibition at the Collège de France, which focuses on the world of the quantum laboratory and its history within the institution, the success of the exhibition as constructed at the Institut Henri-Poincaré testifies to a growing interest in quantum physics in contemporary culture. Although its foundations date back to the beginning of the ^20th century, quantum physics is still perceived as a science of the future. This collaboration also raises a broader question : can quantum physics ultimately produce lasting aesthetic effects ? For Aurore Young, there's little doubt about it. " There is an imaginary world inspired by quantum physics that is developing. We're seeing the emergence of films like Oppenheimer, podcasts, novels and, today, pictorial works. " But this imaginative effervescence also covers a technological mutation. " There is a lot of investment in quantum computers, but also start-ups, notably in quantum telecommunications, ultra-sensitive detection, or quantum simulators. The team I belong to is working on creating quantum states that live longer, to enable more advanced dynamic simulations ", explains the physicist. In this context, art can play a critical role, not by simplifying reality, but by creating new ways of thinking about what's to come.

From then on, the aim is not to freeze a scientific truth in an image, but to make art a place of active indetermination. For the exhibition is not intended to close a debate, but to open it up. " On avance en marchant ", sums up the researcher. The very title of the project, L'Atelier quantique, suggests a place of fabrication as much as a space for reflection - a workshop in the double sense of the term, where concepts, forms and experiments are tinkered with. Between art, science and philosophy, a third space emerges, fragile but fertile.

*Aurore Young is a doctoral student in the Rydberg Atoms team headed by Michel Brune.