Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
(1944, Zürich)
One year at the school for applied Art in Zürich and an apprentice as a scientific illustrator at the scientific department of the Zoological Museum of the University of Zürich where she worked for geneticists and taxonomists as a freelancer for 25 years. Later work at marine stations in the Mediterranean as well as the South Pacific. After the accident of Chernobyl 1987 – 1990 studies leaf bugs and plants in the environs of areas with nuclear fallout in Sweden, Ticino, Switzerland and Chernobyl Ukraine. In 1988 she makes the first studies of leaf bugs in the environs of nuclear power plants in Switzerland. On 1988 and 1989 she publishes her first articles about deformed leaf bugs and Drosophila flies. Studies on the health on leaf bugs in the environs of the reprocessing plants Sellafield, UK, 1989 and La Hague, France, 1999. Her studies on the health of leaf bugs in the environs of the nuclear power plants Three Mile Island and Peach Bottom Plant Pennsylvania, USA, 1991, as well as Krümmel and Stade in Germany, 1995, and Gundremmingen, 2002. In 1997 she studies leaf bugs in the environs of the nuclear test area in Nevada and Utah, USA, and 1998 around Hanford nuclear factories.
The exhibition After Chernobyl toured Europe and Canada from 1992 until 1999. Since 1994 she has undertaken cooperative work with Locus+, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, who organized the exhibition and book 'The Future's Mirror'. In 1998 her book called 'Heteroptera' came out with the German publisher Zweitausendeins and 2003 with the publisher Steidl. The English version appeared at Scalo Zürich 2003. In 1986 she began working with the silk manufacturer Fabric Frontline Zürich, for whom she created 75 designs which were very successful and with which she could pay all her research.
