Extra-Terrestrial Art in the 21st Century

Artists (list in progress) :

The eac. – Centre d’art contemporain d’intérêt national (Contemporary Art Centre of National Interest), in partnership with the Observatoire de l’Espace, the cultural laboratory of CNES, presents the work of contemporary artists who have explored the notion of extra-terrestrial art. This manifesto exhibition seeks to lay the foundations for the conceptualisation of 21st-century extra-terrestrial art.

Through its creative residencies granting artists access to spatial resources, the Observatoire de l’Espace of CNES has built up, within its contemporary art collection, a body of works resulting from a direct interaction with the space environment. The International Space Station thus serves as a real or virtual site of creation for works that reflect the new sensory perceptions generated by weightlessness on objects and bodies. Video works, drawings, sculptures and photographs produced on board the Airbus ZERO-G explore how terrestrial artistic media can adapt to weightlessness, using creative devices specifically designed for the context of parabolic flight.

Finally, stratospheric balloon flights make it possible to ascend gradually towards Space, offering a new vantage point on the extra-terrestrial and transforming materials through direct contact with the space environment.

This exploration of extra-terrestrial art builds upon the first experiments of Space Art artists conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, and takes place at a time when announcements of forthcoming human presence on the Moon are multiplying, alongside a multifaceted space activity led both by institutional bodies and by NewSpace actors. Amid this current efflorescence, contemporary creation seems to hold an exceptional opportunity to open a new chapter in the history of art.

The exhibition Extra-Terrestrial Art in the 21st Century invites the public to experience the outcome of a direct and original interaction with Space, realised by contemporary artists.