The Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade had her personal genome printed out for her exhibition “In Absence” – on 314,000 DIN A4 pages of paper. To do this, she collaborated with Sven Rahmann, bioinformatics professor at Saarland University. The exhibition can be visited at the Berlinische Galerie until April 4.

The human genome consists of 3.1 billion base pairs - a number that is difficult to grasp. “Even for us bioinformaticians, this is an abstractly high number, although we work with genome data almost every day. This is because we usually only have the data as files on the computer,” says Saarbrücken bioinformatics professor Sven Rahmann.

The dimensions of the human genome can be better understood through a project by the Berlin artist Alicja Kwade. She has had her personal genome printed out on 314,000 A4 pages and is exhibiting it publicly in her exhibition “In Absence” at the Berlinische Galerie. 12,000 pages have been hung on the walls of the hall, the rest are in copper archive boxes distributed around the room. If all the pages of this genome document were laid side by side, they would stretch over a length of around 66 kilometers.

More information is available in the press release by Saarland Informatics Campus, or in an article of Saarbrücker Zeitung.

(Photograph by Frank Tschentscher)