site.btaRadiating Truth: Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s Art Tracks the Hidden Impact of Radiation

An exhibition titled The Radiating Truth by Swiss artist and scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger will open at Little Bird Place Gallery in Sofia on January 8, the gallery team said on Friday.

This will be Hesse-Honegger’s first solo exhibition in Eastern Europe, featuring works that bridge art and science and explore the impact of nuclear radiation on global biodiversity.

The gallery team added that the exhibition will be Hesse-Honegger’s first solo show in Eastern Europe. It will feature some of her best-known works, situated at the intersection of art and science, that explore the effects of nuclear radiation on global biodiversity.

The exhibition will feature eight high-quality digital reproductions of watercolours depicting insects collected from regions with elevated radiation levels, including Ukraine, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, among others.

At the opening, Hesse-Honegger will lead a guided tour and personally introduce visitors to the subject she has devoted nearly six decades of her life to, the Little Bird Place Gallery team said.

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger (born 1944) is a Swiss artist and scientific illustrator. She was born in Zurich to the artist parents Gottfried Honegger and Warja Lavater. She studied scientific illustration at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Zurich, where she worked for over 25 years. She developed a practice at the intersection of art and science, producing detailed depictions of insects with deformities attributed to radiation exposure and chemical contamination. After the Chernobyl disaster, she concentrated her investigations on insect mutations in nuclear-affected regions in Europe, the United States, and Japan, maintaining that so-called low-level radiation is harmful. She has authored scientific publications in collaboration with researchers in biology and ecotoxicology, and her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including Zurich, Oxford, Paris, Barcelona, New York, and Tokyo. She is a recipient of the Nuclear-Free Future Award and a member of the Atomic Photographers Guild.