Memory Meets Quantum Reality

Serena Scapagnini Brings Art and Science to the United Nations

In fall 2026, the work and research of Italian artist Serena Scapagnini will be presented through an exhibition created specifically for the United Nations, set within the timeless spaces of the UN headquarters, designed by Wallace Harrison. The exhibition is a cross-disciplinary project exploring the interfaces between art, quantum physics, and neuroscience.

by World Academy of Art and Science

Scapagnini’s work has been shaped by a decades-long dialogue with Yale University, sustained by the Higley Lab in support of neuroscientific inquiry into memory, and further developed through collaborative projects with the Yale Quantum Institute and the Wu Tsai Institute.

The project aims to create a cultural platform where artistic research, scientific innovation, and philosophical inquiry converge. By exploring human memory and transforming quantum concepts into tangible aesthetic experiences, the project fosters public engagement with frontier science while highlighting the broader implications of scientific research for our understanding of nature, consciousness, and the future of humanity.

As an original proposal for the United Nations Headquarters, Scapagnini’s research explores the intersection of memory, impermanence, and quantum reality. Memory functions as the conceptual bridge between neuroscience and quantum theory, with artistic practice translating both into perceptual experience. It engages with the simultaneity of states prior to measurement, the principle of quantum superposition, and the process of decoherence, investigating how experiences, memories, and identities shift, collapse, and dissolve into their environment.

In her current work, the simultaneity of particles’ positions, together with a reflection on dissipative processes, emerges at the edge of continuous exchanges with the environment—where quantum memory dissolves into the rest of the universe. Analogies with the lexicon of the brain, where perception and matter intertwine, are also presented in the exhibition through paintings and a selection of drawings dedicated to the living narratives of memory, exploring how memory shapes identity, how it fades, and how it persists—in fragments, emotions, and images. In the main floating installation, employing engraved copper, layered materials, light, and spatial composition, Scapagnini’s work renders the invisible architecture of quantum phenomena perceptible. The collaborative project, developed by the artist at the Yale Quantum Institute and presented in the atrium of the United Nations Headquarters, incorporates different material densities, from aluminum and copper plates to paper specially handmade for the site-specific installation, culminating in an engraved metal core within each element. The resulting work connects these layers in a choral composition, suggesting quantum intuition as an underlying law of natural phenomena.

The exhibition environment becomes a contemplative space where scientific discovery meets sensory experience, inviting audiences to reflect on the evolving relationship between knowledge, perception, and human consciousness. A public program of talks and encounters will accompany the exhibition, fostering dialogue between artists, scientists, and the wider community.

The exhibition is conceived by Scapagnini and curated by Indian researcher Joy Roy Choudhury. The project translates key principles of quantum physics—superposition, entanglement, non-locality, and quantum memory—into immersive visual and spatial forms that explore the profound connections between the microscopic and macroscopic structures of reality.

Within the framework of the United Nations, a scientific talk held by Scapagnini and Prof. Michael Higley will accompany the exhibition, addressing its central themes and opening new pathways for understanding art as a cognitive, cultural, epistemological, and ontological system—one that remains vital within the evolving landscape of human thought.

This seminar complements the presentation of her current research conducted in collaboration with the Yale Quantum Institute, the Wu Tsai Institute, and the Department of Neuroscience, articulating a shared field of inquiry at the intersection of contemporary art and science.

Scapagnini’s work is currently situated within the cross-disciplinary program of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale University. Her artwork “Saliency – La Memoria Cangiante” is slated for acquisition into the University’s permanent collection.

Her research—through which she was appointed a Junior Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science in 2021—will be presented in parallel in a solo exhibition dedicated to her by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, as part of a focus on art and science envisioned by Director Claudio Pagliara in fall 2026. An event dedicated to Scapagnini’s research is also currently in preparation at Magazzino Italian Art, unfolding as part of an ongoing curatorial engagement with the intersections of contemporary art, scientific inquiry, and experimental thought. The exhibition proposes a space of shared reflection, where contemporary scientific paradigms and artistic practice converge to expand the ways in which reality is perceived, embodied, and transformed. As a suspended space between knowledge systems, art and science operate not as separate disciplines, but as contiguous modes of inquiry into the evolving conditions of human perception.

SERENA SCAPAGNINI

Memory Meets Quantum Reality

SERENA SCAPAGNINI

SERENA SCAPAGNINI