Below you will find an overview of the exhibitions that have been held in the Pieterskerk Leiden in recent years.

From 20 August to 25 September 2022, the temporary exhibition Gaia was on display, featuring a touring artwork by British artist Luke Jerram. In Greek mythology, Gaia is the personification of Mother Earth. The artist created the globe to scale, 1.8 million times smaller than the real Earth. Viewed from a distance of 211 metres, the artwork would appear as the Earth does when seen from the Moon. Gaia has a diameter of seven metres and features detailed 120 dpi NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface. It offers visitors the opportunity to view our planet as the crew of Apollo 17 saw it in 1972. A specially commissioned composition by BAFTA award-winning composer Dan Jones was played throughout the exhibition. The artwork offers a new perspective on our place on Earth, evoking a sense that all societies across the planet are interconnected and that we share a responsibility towards one another. It invites us to reflect on the questions: how do we treat our planet, and what is our relationship with nature?

From 9 to 15 September 2024, the temporary exhibition SMILE was on display at the Pieterskerk Leiden, partly as part of Leiden’s Night of Discoveries. The art project was suspended in the crossing of the church. This groundbreaking tech-art installation by Matthias Oostrik takes a photographic portrait of the visitor and, using advanced AI technology, transforms it into a flawless replica: a perfected version of yourself, like a superhuman shaped according to an ideal of perfection. Oostrik uses existing AI systems with as little intervention as possible, allowing their built-in biases to remain visible. For example, participants’ perceived “race” or gender may be described and represented. “I don’t see the biases in our technology as flaws in the technology itself, but rather as magnifications of shortcomings in society that we need to bring to light,” Oostrik explains, “SMILE offers an intriguing perspective on beauty and perception, encouraging us to think critically about technology”.