Project start: 2021 Project end: Aug 2026 Throughout history, 117 billion humans have gazed at the same moon, yet only 24 people – all American men – have seen its surface up close. During the pandemic, Rhiannon Adam discovered an application for the ultimate art residency: dearMoon. In 2018, Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa announced a global search for 8 artists to join him on a week-long lunar circumnavigation aboard SpaceX’s Starship. dearMoon's flight path would echo Apollo 8’s 1968 journey, which famously led astronaut Bill Anders to suggest NASA “should have sent poets” to capture the sense of wonder he experienced. dearMoon sought to fulfil this vision by inviting creatives to reflect on humanity from space, aiming to inspire world peace. In 2021, Adam was chosen as the only female crew member from a million applicants. For three years, she immersed herself in the space industry. However, in June 2024, Maezawa abruptly canceled the mission, leaving the crew to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives; a psychological "re-entry" to normal life. - The project has been worked on in chapter form. I have an exhibition confirmed for Aug '26 and a publisher interested, and I wish to make a series of 5 new images to complete the series. These images will be reenactments of heroic space images from the 1960s, published in LIFE Magazine, and 2 contemporaneous images from women's magazine Look, that asked if women should be the first in space.
