Art for Artemis – Sonja

ESA has teamed up with eight art schools around Europe and challenged their students to produce art inspired by Artemis, lunar exploration and the European Service Module that will provide the power, propulsion, water and air for the astronauts on board.

Students made 24 artworks that we will showcase on the Orion blog over the coming months. Using a variety of techniques and from many different cultural backgrounds, the artists have thought about what human spaceflight to the Moon and beyond signifies.

This artwork was made by Sonja Prein from the Hochschule Darmstadt in Germany.

"At first the direction I was going, was a collage of mixed media, a picture set together. Then I found the picture of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan L. Bean which I loved very much, because it evokes nostalgia for past Moon missions and makes you curious about the things that we will still discover. Looking into the visor of Alan puts the viewer in the action as if they were part of the project/mission. The artwork should point out the informational matter of the project, (as well as a reminder of previous moon missions – evoke nostalgia). Something with a similar meaning but not as a repetition of what was said before. The whole artwork is set in the golden ratio."

As the only place that humans have seen with their own eyes throughout history, our Moon features heavily in world cultures. The Artemis programme, itself named after the ancient Greek goddess of the Moon, will take humans back to our natural satellite and, in doing so, will become memorialised in popular culture.

All the artworks are available on ESA's Orion blog with interviews with the artists.