Caroline Corbasson

Born in 1989, Caroline Corbasson lives in Paris and explores the place of humans in the universe through the prism of scientific and collective imaginaries in connection with astrophysics and cosmology. Her research questions the ambivalent nature of human knowledge and the way in which scientific discoveries have renewed our apprehension of the cosmos and space-time and our understanding of our origins. Working at the interface between metaphysics and science, she examines the distance that separates the scientific observation of space and our immediate observation of the sky, the latter giving rise to cosmic representations that are often full of fantasy.  

To represent the movements of celestial bodies, Caroline Corbasson uses photography, charcoal drawing and digital enlargement made possible by the electron microscope, thus connecting the archaism of mineral materials with the sophistication of technology. Oscillating between a quasi-scientific documentary approach and a sensitive quest, she establishes correspondences between the infinitely large, of which the evolution goes back to a pre-cultural period, and the infinitely small, at molecular level. Her collaborations with internationally renowned scientific institutions give her access to the everyday world of top-level scientific study. In Atacama (2017), made at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, she attempts, in the hostile desert environment, to find traces of stellar dust, a primordial matter that fertilised life on Earth. À Ta Recherche/Looking for You (2019), made during her residence at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille for the space project Euclid NISP, further develops this renewal of poetic language through science and questions the symbolism of astrophysical research, between rationality and fascination, and the place of human beings in this great quest.