This piece is comprised of 170 fossils carved into spherical beads. Each bead represents a major event in the evolution of life, stretching across the vast expanse of geological time. From the emergence of the monocellular origins of life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago to the shifting of continental plates, from the extinctions of the Cretaceous period triggered by a falling meteorite to the first blooming of flowers, this work strings together miniature worlds from different historical epochs, reenacting cycles of evolution and extinction on Earth.

Working together with lighting engineers, Katie Paterson took spectral measurements of moonlight, then created a light bulb that reproduces its unique characteristics. This exhibition features a single moonlight bulb, inviting visitors to experience the light of a moonlit night within a dimly lit space. By transforming something as elusive as moonlight into a physical form, Paterson establishes an intimate connection between a vast cosmic phenomenon and human experience.

And the Moon and the Stars and the World begins with an almost impossible proposition: could all life be represented within a single jewel?

The artwork takes the form of a tiny white diamond, created from an extraordinary collection of materials gathered by Katie Paterson over more than a decade. Spanning billions of years of Earth’s history, the collection encompasses thousands of tree species; sands from every desert on Earth; plants, animals, fungi, mosses, lichens, algae and microorganisms; and materials gathered from tropical rainforests, mountains, islands, polar regions, and the deep ocean. Reaching beyond the history of life itself, it incorporates cosmic dust that predates the solar system, some of the oldest rocks on Earth, and fossils tracing the evolution of life, from ancient microorganisms to forests and dinosaurs. Ancient wood and fossilized plant matter connect the work to vanished worlds, while contemporary leaves, seeds and flowers carry traces of living species and ecosystems, including those threatened by human activity.

Carbon extracted from these materials has been subjected to intense heat and pressure to grow a single diamond, transforming traces of life from across the Earth into a precious stone. Presented alone, the diamond’s minute scale contrasts with the immensity of what it contains, creating a dizzying juxtaposition of sizes and timescales.

Circe, the sorceress from Homer’s Odyssey, possesses a profound knowledge of the natural world and the power of transformation. To create this piece, Katie Paterson collected sands from deserts, arid regions, and salt flats across the world, transforming them through heat into layers of glass, assembled into a cylindrical form. Sand carries within it traces of immense geological processes, shaped by the weathering of rocks, erosion and sedimentation over millions of years, evoking landscapes and environments that have long since vanished. The glass sculpture is accompanied by a small mound of sand, bringing together grains collected from every desert across the Earth. This work was created in collaboration with architectural studio Zeller & Moye.

Night is a light sculpture that brings together the colors of approximately 10,000 stars visible to the unaided human eye from both hemispheres of Earth, transforming the immense diversity of starlight into a single physical presence. Created by Katie Paterson in collaboration with astrophysicists studying star formation and evolution, the artwork draws on astronomical data to translate the colors and luminosities of these stars into a continuous spectrum of light. Each star emits a distinct color determined by its surface temperature and spectral type, ranging from the warm reds of the coolest stars to the blue-white light of the hottest. Rather than representing the stars individually, their light is combined within the sculpture, condensing the visible night sky into a single luminous form.

This artwork brings together 92 festoon lights on a single string, each representing a star in the Phoenix constellation. The brightness of each light corresponds to the apparent brightness of its star as observed from Earth. Phoenix is a constellation in the southern sky. Viewed from Earth, its stars appear to form a two-dimensional image of a phoenix. In reality, these stars are separated by vast distances across the three-dimensional expanse of space. In the installation, their positions are rearranged, bringing stars scattered across immense distances in the cosmos together within UCCA Dune.

Earth-Moon-Earth (E.M.E.) radio is a form of transmission that uses the moon as a reflector. Messages are sent from the Earth in Morse code, reflected off the surface of the Moon, then received and decoded back on Earth. The uneven surface of the Moon absorbs some of the signal, leaving the reflected message incomplete.

Katie Paterson translated Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata into Morse code and transmitted it to the Moon using E.M.E. technology. After reflecting off the lunar surface, the code returned to Earth and was re-translated into a musical score. Finally, it is played out here by an automated grand piano. In this new score, certain notes have been “swallowed” by lunar impact basins and craters, meaning that listeners hear a version of the Moonlight Sonata adapted by the Moon itself.

〇 is a series of elemental paintings taking the form of circles, globes, or planets, made using pigments derived from materials originating on Earth and across the cosmos. Paintings I through VII are presented in this exhibition, incorporating pigments from the earliest life on Earth; ashes from more than 10,000 unique tree species; sands from every desert; fossilized remains of life spanning billions of years; salts from ancient evaporated oceans; and pre-solar dust and the elements that make up stars, respectively. Each circle serves as a symbolic pinhole, offering a glimpse into landscapes lost through the passage of time. Condensing eons of material history into singular forms, these paintings invite reflection on the deep connections between the origins of our world, the cosmos, and the present moment.

Totality is a mirror ball bringing together every solar eclipse documented by humankind. Its surface is covered in more than 10,000 reflective tiles, each bearing a unique image of a solar eclipse. These images span centuries, from early astronomical drawings and nineteenth-century photography to images captured by today’s most advanced telescopes. Arranged row by row across the surface of the ball, they trace the progression of a solar eclipse from partial to total, mirroring the sequence of the Sun eclipsed by the Moon. As the ball slowly rotates, thousands of eclipses are reflected across the room, casting shifting patterns of light and shadow.

Timepieces (Solar System) consists of nine clocks, modified to tell the time on the eight planets of our solar system, as well as the Moon. Due to the differing rotations and orbital motions of these celestial bodies, the duration of a day on each varies, from the shortest on Jupiter to the longest on Mercury. Each clock is calibrated to mark the passage of time in relation to Earth. Extending the familiar concept of time zones beyond our planet and across the solar system, the work invites viewers to contemplate the different rhythms of time on other worlds.

Candle (from Earth Into a Black Hole) is a scented white candle that burns down over approximately twelve hours, creating a journey through space via scent. The candle is formed of 23 layers, each containing a unique perfume corresponding to a planet or place in the Universe. Developed in collaboration with biochemists and perfumers, the scents draw on scientific research and astronauts’ descriptions of space. As the candle burns, the fragrances are released in sequence, taking us on an olfactory journey from Earth, through the Moon, the Sun and the planets of our solar system, onwards through distant stars and the vacuum of space, before finally arriving at a black hole. The candle will be lit intermittently throughout the exhibition.

Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest explosions in the Universe, second only to the Big Bang, and can burn with a luminosity more than 100 billion times that of our Sun. The confetti cannons created for 100 Billion Suns each contain 3,216 pieces of paper, color-coded to correspond to every recorded gamma-ray burst at the time the work was made. Each burst of confetti creates a miniature version of these vast cosmic explosions, bringing events of almost unimaginable scale into a fleeting, earthly moment.

A meteorite, which has travelled through space and time for over 4.5 billion years, was cast, melted and then recast into a new version of itself, replicating its original form. Originating from the Campo del Cielo meteorite field in Argentina, the work transforms an ancient extraterrestrial object back into itself. In 2014, another version of the artwork was returned to space by the European Space Agency.

On Mars, the colors of sunset are almost the reverse of those on Earth. While Earth’s sunsets glow with warm reds and oranges around the Sun, Martian sunsets produce a distinctive blue glow around the setting Sun, with warmer reddish tones spreading across the surrounding sky.

Drawing on scientific research into the colors of Martian twilight, Katie Paterson has transformed the windows of Gallery 5 to recreate this otherworldly light. Looking through the glass, visitors encounter the surrounding landscape as though illuminated by the light of another planet, hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth. The filtered sunlight streaming into the gallery creates a serene atmosphere, while heightening the otherworldly qualities of UCCA Dune’s science fiction-like architecture.

To Burn, Forest, Fire uses scent to explore the first-ever forest on Earth and a possible last forest in the age of the climate crisis. Working with scientists and Japanese incense makers, Katie Paterson created two bespoke incense sticks that transport visitors through hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history.

The first blend evokes the earliest known forest, which grew approximately 385 million years ago in what is now Cairo, New York State, and was home to ancient trees including the extinct Cladoxylopsida. The second recreates the scent of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse and threatened regions of the Amazon rainforest. Each incense stick recreates not simply the scent of trees, but the atmosphere of an entire forest: its vegetation, soil, moisture, decaying wood and air.

For thousands of years, incense has been used in rituals as a bridge to what lies beyond everyday experience. Here, scent becomes a means of travelling through deep time, inviting reflection on extinction, climate change and the fragility of life on Earth. The incense is periodically burned in Gallery 6, where visitors can experience these ancient and threatened landscapes through scent while contemplating the shifting mists of Vapour beyond the window.

This hourglass is filled with a plethora of cosmic materials: debris from exploding stars, remnants from asteroids, fragments of lunar meteorites, Martian dust, rocks that have travelled for millions of miles across the Universe, and even materials from before the birth of the Sun. Crushed into a fine powder and enclosed in the hand-blown glass, these are among the oldest known materials on Earth. The more than 4.6 billion years of our solar system’s history are thus compressed into the 15 minutes measured by the hourglass.

First There is a Mountain invites participants to sculpt beaches into mountains of sand, forming temporary micro-geologies with a series of “buckets and spades” shaped like five mountains from around the world: Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Shasta (North America), Mount Fuji (Asia), Stromboli (Europe), and Uluru (Oceania).

One set is displayed inside UCCA Dune, while others can be borrowed from the front desk and used to create mountains of sand on the beach outside. Unlike the ancient geological formations that inspire them, the resulting sand mountains will disintegrate within hours, if not sooner, offering a playful reminder of the immense gap between human and geological timescales.

Installed on UCCA Dune’s terraces, Vapour is an ever-changing atmospheric sculpture formed from water gathered from across the planet. Bringing together over 1,000 unique samples, the artwork forms a planetary archive of water, drawn from the highest mountain peaks and the deepest oceans; melting glaciers and ancient ice cores; sacred springs, wells, and holy water fonts; rivers, lakes, wetlands, and rainforests; polar seas, monsoon rains, mist, fog, and dew. These waters are transformed into a fine mist, creating a slowly shifting field of fog that drifts and gathers. Visitors move through and breathe the atmosphere, becoming physically immersed in waters that carry traces of the Earth’s climates, cultures, and ecosystems.

The collected waters connect geological time, celestial events, sacred rituals, ancient civilisations, and intimate moments of human experience. The collection includes water from a 1,000-year-old ice core; deep underground aquifers emerging through ancient volcanic landscapes; water gathered during a solar eclipse, beneath a full moon, during the Perseid meteor shower, and at the spring equinox and summer solstice. Sacred waters have been gathered from the Ganges, Jordan, and Yamuna rivers; the Zamzam Well in Mecca; ancient Nuragic wells; Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines; Christian holy wells, monasteries, and pilgrimage sites; springs associated with ancient Greek mythology; and beside 5,000-year-old standing stones in Orkney. Their molecules have passed through oceans, clouds, rivers, and living bodies, evaporating, freezing, and raining down again over immense stretches of time. Yet these waters have never existed together in this precise constellation before. Drifting towards the sea, the fog gradually disperses, its waters returning to the atmosphere, where sea and sky meet and boundaries between body, air, and environment begin to dissolve.

Ideas is an ongoing, lifelong series of short, haiku-like sentences by Katie Paterson, imagining artworks that exist somewhere between thought and reality. Moving between the intimate and the cosmic, these ideas take shape in the imagination of whoever encounters them, forming a constellation of reflections on glaciers, forests, oceans, stars, extinction, deep time, and the origins of the Universe.

In this exhibition, 100 of these imagined artworks are spoken in English and Mandarin, drifting through the rooftop garden of UCCA Dune. The artist’s texts surface briefly in sound before dissolving again, appearing and disappearing like fleeting thoughts. Together, they create a dreamlike, immersive soundscape, inviting contemplation and allowing vast scales of time, matter and imagination to unfold within the listener’s mind.