Secrets in the Carbon Atom

Simona Barbera, Nadine Byrne, Nicholas Johnson, Emiliano Maggi
Curated by Angels Miralda

White light pulsating in intensity
Stars are celestial diamonds
On a stable ground of matte darkness
That holds vast unknowable mysteries
Why something rather than nothing at all?

My father is an astrophysicist, a cosmologist to be precise. I always used to wonder how you could work on something that makes your life seem so insignificant. But I guess you and I are the stars up there. We’re made of the same elements. We break up and punctuate something more eternal. And we burn intensely even if just for a fleeting few billion years.

But from here you can’t see them. We messed it up somehow. You need to go out to the top of the Andes or the California desert. A meadow deep in a forest. These in-betweens of urban civilisation.