We, Starry Shivers

For fifteen years, Laure Prouvost has been bringing to life what exists only in the conditional: dreams, imaginary grandmothers, languages searching for themselves, talking animals. This summer, the French artist, winner of the 2013 Turner Prize, tackles the most radical invisible: matter at the quantum scale. And she does so on a grand scale, under the restored glass roof of the North Nave of the Grand Palais, an exceptional space rarely entrusted to a single artist. A spectacular installation, born from two years of interviews with the philosopher Tobias Rees and the physicist Hartmut Neven, revolving around a dizzying question: “What might one feel when perceiving reality from a quantum point of view?” To answer it, Prouvost gained access to a powerful quantum computer from which she extracted images and sounds—sensitive and unpredictable reflections of a system that defies prediction. Neither diagrams nor equations: physics becomes poetic matter.

At the center of the installation, a monumental six-armed kinetic sculpture, animated by sound and light, omnipresent yet evanescent, houses a video that connects the visitor to matter from all angles. Around it are meteorite-like objects called Cute Bits – a clever play on qubits, the units of measurement in quantum computing. Some take the form of headphones through which voices are heard and a mineral, metallic scent is emitted. All participate in what Prouvost calls the “quantum ballet of entanglement.” A century after its theorization, quantum physics finds here a rare expression: a shared sense of wonder, a metaphysics of "us."

GRAND PALAIS
From June 10 to July 26, 2026
7 avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 - Metro Franklin D. Roosevelt (Line 9)
Mon. to Sun. 10:00 AM - 7:30 PM
Price: €8 - Reduced price: €5 - Free for under 18s