The Enemy Made Visible
Louis Pasteur rarely shook hands. Why would he? The generation of scientists he belonged to had just discovered that agents of disease are microscopic creatures, invisible to the human eye. Their lurking threat superseded the need for common courtesy. To touch was to risk contamination, to spread and enhance disease, possibly to risk dying.
When the SARS-CoV-2 virus adopted humans as its hosts three years ago, it made the hidden enemy omnipresent in our generation. The image of spiked viral particles coating every surface and packing the air spaces between us, transformed our lives and presented a new challenge for scientists. Artists put the coronavirus at the heart of their work. How could they not? It is a defining force of our times.
It’s a shimmering ode to a killer agent.
First exhibited at the Oxford Museum of Natural History, is a scrupulously accurate three-dimensional “drawing” of the virus by Scottish artist Angela Palmer. It appears to have trapped a single SARS-CoV-2 viral particle in glass, magnified to 8 million times its
