The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation Launches Platform Dalí, a New Art and Science Program
Inspired by Dalí’s vision and his engagement with scientific work, this program seeks to explore the limits of knowledge and imagination through dialogue between art and science.
The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation presents Platform Dalí, a new international program inspired by the Empordà-born artist whose work was profoundly shaped by the scientific advances of the 20th century. Directed by the curator and art historian Mónica Bello, an internationally recognized leader at the intersection of art and science and former Head of Arts at CERN, Geneva, Platform Dalí fosters dialogue between artists and scientists to explore new ways of understanding the world. As Bello notes, the program’s ambition is “to establish a stable framework in which art and science can approach the complexity of the world together and invite us to observe it through multiple lenses.”
Dalí observed his time through the lens of science. His work and thought absorbed and reimagined concepts from atomic physics, relativity, genetics, neuroscience, mathematics and early computing, weaving them into a cosmology of his own. Throughout his life, he cultivated an extensive intellectual ecosystem, being inspired and in some cases establishing long-term dialogues with scientists such as Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Severo Ochoa, James Watson, and Francis Crick. Platform Dalí builds on this vision to explore the limits of knowledge and imagination through the hybridisation of art and science.
Based in Barcelona, Platform Dalí is anchored in the city’s scientific ecosystem. The program has established collaborations with five leading science centers: the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), the Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE), and the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB). Together, they create a singular framework for artistic practices to engage with key areas of contemporary research: life sciences, fundamental physics, supercomputing, marine sciences, and photonics, opening spaces for new forms of experimentation between disciplines.
Starting in 2026, Platform Dalí will foster research, creation, and mediation through annual artistic fellowships, residencies, encounters in laboratories and public events. Fellows will develop 18-month research projects in dialogue with one or more centers, while resident artists will immerse themselves in a one-month research stay in a laboratory to produce new works that will be presented the following year. There will be space for sustained exchange between researchers and artists inside the scientific environments, and public events will share the processes with wider audiences and expand on the program’s core themes with invited researchers.
The first invited artists echo Dalí’s drive to expand the limits of their fields through exchange with other forms of knowledge: Mexican artist Tania Candiani, whose practice crosses sonic, technological and visual languages; Andalusian dancer and choreographer Israel Galván; Catalan collective Taller Estampa, known for its critical engagement with digital technologies and more-than-human environments; and George Mahashe, an artist and academic whose work examines the relationships between art, science, and systems of knowledge in the South African context. Over the course of 2026, Platform Dalí will announce the remaining three resident artists, completing an annual cohort of five residents and two fellows.
To learn more, visit platformdali.org.
