May 2025
Drifting Among the Stars: On Yael Bartana, Erika Blumenfeld, and the Poetics of Outer Space
By Nato Thompson
Generation Ship, 2024, 3D model 410 x 410 x 700 cm, courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; Petzel Gallery, New York; Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm, photo: Andrea Rosetti
I do try. I try to turn down the volume of a world that constantly pushes forward, that seeks to measure and master every corner of the unknown. But it’s hard. Especially when it comes to outer space. The stars, the galaxies, the cosmic dust—they call not for possession but for perception. The moon is a mystery not a colony. Amid that noise, what has held my attention are the voices and visions of artists like Yael Bartana and Erika Blumenfeld. Their work treats the cosmos with the respect and humility I think it truly deserves. In their work, I see something far more radical: outer space as a realm of feeling.
Their visions of space offer a true exploration without agenda. They approach the infinite black with reverence. In their hands, space becomes a site not for projection, but for reflection. Their work imagines that outer space might be less about distant stars and more about our capacity to dream, to remember, and to listen. They remind us that the cosmos is not just something we observe, but something that moves through us.
It was 2012 when I worked with the artist Trevor Paglen on The Last Pictures—an archive of images launched into geosynchronous orbit, meant to last beyond civilization. It was a project about time and disappearance. About what lingers after everything else fades. Space, in that context, was not a new frontier but a deep well of silence. It was a place where our symbols might float endlessly, their meanings altered or erased, their presence quietly haunting the dark.
There is a long tradition of thinking about the cosmos in such intimate terms. Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), for example, was never really about space. It was about memory, about grief. It was about the things we carry with us no matter how far we travel. The planet in Solaris was not alien; it was familiar. A mirror of the psyche. A reminder that we never truly leave ourselves behind. For the Russian cosmists and other philosophical dreamers, space was not just the unknown. It was the soul’s extension.
In many ways, the work of Bartana and Blumenfeld picks up this lineage and carries it forward, shaped by a distinctly feminine gaze. Not in opposition to men, but in an embrace of other ways of knowing. Their practices ask: What if outer space was not a destination but a meditation? What if the stars were not out there to be reached, but here to be heard? They make space personal. Emotional. Mythic.
This perspective does not shrink from complexity. Rather, it lingers in it. It welcomes contradiction, nuance, and uncertainty. Instead of rockets and conquest, it offers ritual and reflection. Instead of escape, it proposes transformation. Bartana and Blumenfeld bring forth a cosmic language written not in numbers or technologies, but in dreams and stories, in slowness and care.
Outside the noise of contemporary life,, there are other ways to think about the universe. Ways that are quieter. Softer. But no less powerful. Bartana and Blumenfeld remind us that space may be vast, but it is not empty. It is filled with memory, longing, and the strange music of our shared becoming.
Generation Ship, 2024, 3D model 410 x 410 x 700 cm, courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; Petzel Gallery, New York; Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm, photo: Andrea Rosetti
Yael Bartana’s Light to the Nations (2023): Exodus as Rebirth
Yael Bartana’s Light to the Nations (2023), presented in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, envisions outer space not as an escape from Earth, but as a profound opportunity for collective healing, reflection, and transformation. The work takes the form of a fictional documentary and installation, imagining a generational spaceship as a vessel for humanity’s future migration. But this is not a flight from crisis. It is an unfolding journey toward renewal—a place where rituals, memories, and spiritual longing might coalesce into new possibilities.
The ship at the heart of the project draws on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, a sacred structure composed of ten spheres known as Sefirot, each symbolizing an aspect of divine wisdom. In Bartana’s vision, these spheres are embodied as functional parts of the ship—spaces for agriculture, education, governance, ritual, and care. In doing so, the vessel becomes more than a technological achievement: it is a living philosophy. Jewish mysticism and cosmic exploration intertwine, transforming the ship into a sanctuary of meaning, where ancient traditions and future aspirations travel side by side.
As with many of Bartana’s previous projects, Light to the Nations employs the strategy of pre-enactment—a speculative imagining of future scenarios that deepens our understanding of the present. Earlier works like And Europe Will Be Stunned and What If Women Ruled the World similarly offered alternate realities that encouraged reflection and dialogue. With this new project, Bartana extends that methodology into space, blurring the boundaries between myth and time, ancestry and aspiration. The ceremonial performances within the film gesture toward a nonlinear temporality in which past and future are held in intimate conversation.
Yael Bartana, Zamach (Assassination), 2011, video still, courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; Petzel Gallery, New York; Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm
Yael Bartana, Zamach (Assassination), 2011, video still, courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam; Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; Petzel Gallery, New York; Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm
This vision of space is not defined by detachment, but by devotion. The journey through the stars becomes a sacred procession shaped by memory and hope. The passengers on Bartana’s ship are not starting over. They are carrying something precious—rituals, ethics, stories, and a commitment to community. The generational structure of the voyage reflects the rhythms of real diasporas, where those who begin a journey may not live to see its destination. In this way, Bartana reframes outer space not as a blank slate but as a continuation of our long histories of resilience and care.
Visually, the project is luminous. The ship appears almost organic, as though grown from collective longing. It is neither sterile nor militant. It glows with the textures of reverence. Each space within the ship invites us to imagine lives unfolding in cycles of growth, study, rest, and ritual. Through carefully staged lighting and choreography, the film becomes a meditation on time, asking us to consider how spiritual and cultural continuity might endure across the stars.
Bartana’s ability to fuse speculative fiction with ancestral narrative results in a vision of space exploration that centers humility and shared responsibility. This is not a story of domination or conquest, but of tending—to memory, to one another, to the unknown. The cosmos becomes a mirror and a sanctuary. A place where humanity is asked not to conquer, but to listen. Not to escape, but to evolve.
In Light to the Nations, Bartana offers a new kind of cosmology—one grounded in ritual, relationship, and reflection. Space is not emptied of meaning. It is dense with it. It holds the possibility for renewal not because it is untouched, but because we carry with us the capacity to remake our world in gentler, more generous ways. In this imagined ark, we are reminded that even the vastness of the universe can be shaped by our capacity for tenderness and care.
Erika Blumenfeld: The Language of Light
Erika Blumenfeld, 336 drawings from Encyclopedia of Trajectories, 2017-ongoing, finely ground 23.75 karat gold in gum Arabic on Arches Aquarelle Watercolor Hot Pressed 140lb paper, 10.25 x 14.25 inches each; Installation view at the Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva, FL, February 2018; Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston. Photo: Erika Blumenfeld
Where Bartana envisions cosmic migration as spiritual renewal, Erika Blumenfeld approaches the interstellar with an almost monastic devotion to observation. Her work exists at the intersection of art and astronomy, treating light itself as a sacred archive. As an artist who has worked with NASA since 2013, she holds a particularly relevant and unique role when it comes to the intersection of art, the interstellar, and the intimate. Blumenfeld is not an artist who simply depicts space; she listens to it, records its silent messages, and translates its fleeting phenomena into a language we can see. Her work invites us to consider the cosmos not as a place to be conquered, but as an intimate presence that has been speaking to us all along.
In Encyclopedia of Trajectories (2017–ongoing), Blumenfeld captures the way celestial motion imprints itself on our world, how the movement of meteors across our skies (the planetary fragments we call falling stars) writes an invisible script of time from across the universe. Blumenfeld transcribes this script as a single brushstroke onto paper with gold (forged in stars), creating a series of performative drawings (over 5000 meteors to date) as a means of cosmic embodiment. These aren’t mere illustrations; they are the motion and unique characteristics of each meteor event revealed through the motion of her body conveyed through her brush. Working with NASA meteor data, she records the motion of meteor events in a way that translates their ephemeral passage and unique characteristics into visible traces, revealing the profound relationship between cosmic and earthly rhythms. The project takes on an almost diaristic quality, ritualistic even, an ongoing record of the celestial in a way that feels deeply personal. Her science- and research-based projects always harken back to her own relationship with outer space—a sort of poetics of when you wish upon a star. The recorded trail of light serves as tangible evidence of the vast yet deeply connected relationship between the cosmos and the Earth.
Erika Blumenfeld, Tracing Luminaries: Plate No. I6914 (Small Magellanic Cloud), 2022, intaglio print with starlight exposed cyanotype, chine collé, and 24k gold leaf on Hahnemuhle Copperplate, 17 x 14.75 inches, published by Island Press; Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston. Photo: Richard Sprengler.
Erika Blumenfeld, Tracing Luminaries: Plate No. B20645 (Small Magellanic Cloud), 2022, intaglio print with starlight exposed cyanotype, chine collé, and 24k gold leaf on Hahnemuhle Copperplate, 17 x 14.75 inches, published by Island Press; Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston. Photo: Richard Sprengler.
Erika Blumenfeld, Detail of Tracing Luminaries: Plate No. A12855 (Large Magellanic Cloud), 2022, intaglio print with starlight exposed cyanotype, chine collé, and 24k gold leaf on Hahnemuhle Copperplate, 14.75 x 17 inches, published by Island Press; Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston. Photo: Richard Sprengler.
Tracing Luminaries (2022), a portfolio of six gilded intaglio prints created in collaboration with Island Press, pays homage to the “Women Computers,” a group of female astronomers at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These women meticulously analyzed astronomical data captured on glass photographic plates, marking them with delicate annotations that shaped modern understandings of the cosmos. Blumenfeld’s prints reimagine these markings, transforming the scientific observations of the past into luminous artistic expressions that bridge historical astronomy with contemporary art.
Each print in Tracing Luminaries was crafted using laser-engraved cast acrylic plates, inked with a transparent base, and printed onto starlight-exposed cyanotyped Okuwara collé on Hahnemühle Copperplate. The images were then revealed with 24-karat gold leaf, resulting in ethereal compositions that merge materiality with celestial wonder. This process not only acknowledges the labor of women in science but also elevates their work into a visual dialogue with the stars themselves, as if inscribing their contributions directly onto the cosmic canvas.
Blumenfeld’s approach to astronomy is deeply personal. She treats each star trail and light phenomena as a kind of correspondence, a whisper from the cosmos that she translates into visible form. This is evident in Light Recordings (1998–ongoing), where she creates luminous impressions of light itself. These works are not photographs in the traditional sense but meditations on presence, the act of capturing something as transient as illumination and offering it permanence.
By doing so, Blumenfeld transforms celestial observation into something reverent, almost devotional. Her Light Recordings are created by exposing photosensitive paper directly to the natural light of our luminaries, the sun and moon, allowing the light itself to inscribe its presence onto the medium. The resulting images are subtle variations of color and texture, each a testament to the uniqueness of a particular moment of cosmic illumination.
These photographs are attempts to bring the reality of space light to Earth, elevating it into something almost sacred—an object imbued with the same awe and reverence as an ancient relic. Her work asks: What does it mean to truly see light? To see the remnants of stars that may have long since burned out, their glow still reaching us across incomprehensible distances? Blumenfeld does not seek to impose meaning onto space, but rather to honor its mysteries by documenting them in their purest form.
Erika Blumenfeld, Light Recording: Total Lunar Eclipse (October 27, 2004), 2004, chromogenic print mounted on aluminum with lamination film, 46 x 185.5 inches; Installation view at DiverseWorks Art Space, Houston, Texas, Solo Exhibition, 2004; Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston. Photo: Erika Blumenfeld
Her collaboration with NASA on the Astromaterials 3D (2013-ongoing) project further emphasizes her approach. She spends hours in close contact, handling, studying, and photographing these fragments of space, getting closer to the mystery of materials gathered in space than any other artist by far. Unlike most who observe space from afar, Blumenfeld has dedicated much of her life to direct engagement with space’s physical remnants, bridging the distance between the cosmos and Earth in a way that is both poetic and scientific. She has created highly detailed, interactive visual archives of meteorites and moon rocks, allowing the public to access and engage with materials from beyond Earth in a way that has never been done before.
Blumenfeld’s engagement with these celestial materials is more than just documentation—it is a form of communion. She treats these astromaterials as living artifacts, each rock a messenger from the depths of time and space. The level of care and reverence she brings to her work is unmatched; she spends countless hours with each specimen, studying its textures, its mineral compositions, its history embedded in cosmic dust. It is not an exaggeration to say that no other artist has spent as much time in close physical proximity to extraterrestrial materials as Blumenfeld has.
Her work suggests that the cosmos is not distant, but intimate. That outer space is not a cold, empty void, but a space of memory, connection, and wonder. Through her work, we are reminded that space is not something separate from us—it is part of us, in the light that reaches our eyes, in the meteorites that have fallen to Earth, in the very atoms that form our bodies. Blumenfeld’s art asks us to slow down, to pay attention, and to recognize that the mysteries of the universe are not just out there, but woven into the fabric of our everyday lives.
Ursula K. Le Guin captured this sensibility when she wrote, "The unknown, the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action." Blumenfeld’s work embodies this principle—an embrace of mystery, of unknowing, of the poetic potential of what we cannot yet understand. Her art does not claim to offer answers, but rather to deepen our sense of wonder, to remind us that the universe is vast and unknowable, and that this unknowability is something to be cherished rather than solved. Through her luminous traces, her celestial diaries, and her close communion with the physical remnants of the cosmos, Blumenfeld offers us a vision of space that is about reverence, curiosity, and the quiet magic of looking up.
Erika Blumenfeld imaging NASA's recently returned sample from the asteroid Bennu in the OSIRIS-REx cleanroom facilities at NASA Johnson Space Center, 2024. Photo: NASA/Robert Markowitz (jsc2024e008590).
Out there lies the strange
Through the works of Yael Bartana and Erika Blumenfeld, space emerges as a sanctuary for wonder, remembrance, and renewal. Their projects invite us to expand our sense of the cosmos—through attention and as a vessel for our deepest questions and quietest longings.
Bartana and Blumenfeld choose to dwell in the liminal space between asteroids and solar flares. Their work proposes that outer space can be a place for feeling and reflection, a canvas for myth and meaning that encourages us to carry forward our traditions and hopes. In this way, space is reimagined not as a departure from Earth, but as a continuation of our emotional, spiritual, and communal life.
What they offer is not an alternative to anyone else’s vision, but a vision all their own—rooted in care, guided by mystery, and fueled by imagination. In their hands, the cosmos becomes a living poem, one that humbles us with its scale while inviting us to participate in its unfolding. Space is allowed to remain unknowable, and in that unknowability, it becomes a space for dreaming.
Bartana and Blumenfeld remind us that the stars are not just distant bodies. They are mirrors, companions, and collaborators in the human endeavor to understand who we are and what we might yet become. Their work sets a course that does not reject what has come before, but instead adds to the story—offering space as a realm of communion, continuity, and quiet transformation.
Yael Bartana (b. 1970, Kfar-Yehezkel, Israel)
Yael Bartana’s films, installations and photographs explore the imagery of identity and the politics of memory. Her starting point is the national consciousness propagated by her native country of Israel. Central to the work are meanings implied by terms like “Homeland”, “Return” and “Belonging”. Bartana investigates these terms through the ceremonies, public rituals and social diversions that are intended to reaffirm the collective identity of the nation state. In her Israeli projects, Bartana deals with the impact of war, military rituals and a sense of threat to everyday life. In 2006, the artist worked in Poland to create projects on the history of Polish-Jewish relations and its influence on the contemporary Polish identity. In 2011, Yael Bartana represented Poland for the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice.
Inspired by a Jewish custom in which sins are cast into the sea, Tashlikh (Cast Off) (2017) serves as a platform for both perpetrators and survivors of various genocides or ethnic persecutions to confront their personal material links to the horrors of the past.
Bartana has had numerous solo exhibitions including Cecilia Hilllström Gallery, Stockholm (2022); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2021); the Jewish Museum, Berlin (2021); Galleria Rafaella Cortese, Milan (2020); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2019); Volksbühne, Berlin (2018); Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture (2017); Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2017); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014); Secession, Vienna (2012); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2012); Moderna Museet in Malmö (2010); the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2009); MoMA PS1, New York (2008); the Kunstverein in Hamburg (2007) and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2006). She has also participated in such prestigious group shows at James Cohan Gallery, New York (2020); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2018); São Paulo Biennial (2010 and 2006); documenta 12, Kassel (2007); among many others. She is a winner of numerous prizes and awards: Artes Mundi 4 (Wales, 2010); Prix Dazibao (Montreal, 2009); Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize (2007); Dorothea von Stetten Kunstpreis (Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2005); Prix de Rome (Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, 2005) and the Anselm Kiefer Prize (2003).
She has works in the permanent collections of Tate Modern, London; The Jewish Museum, New York; The Guggenheim, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Van Abbe Museum, Netherlands; and Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands, among others.
Erika Blumenfeld (b. 1971, Newark, NJ) is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer whose work explores the material and poetic origins of our relationship with the natural world. Since 1998, her practice has become increasingly research-based and focused on the places where art, science, nature and culture converge, investigating the places where the phenomenological world meets human experience. Examining entanglements between natural phenomena, ecology, geology, astronomy, and cosmochemistry, her work intends to study the notion of an embodied relationship with the cosmos—that we are, in our very chemistry, of and from the stars; a confirmation of our connectedness across the cosmos.
Blumenfeld holds a BFA in Photography from Parsons School for Design and an MSc in Conservation Studies from University College London. A Guggenheim, Smithsonian, and Emerson Collective Fellow, Blumenfeld’s studios have included laboratories, observatories, and extreme environments, and she has collaborated with scientists and research institutions, including NASA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, McDonald Observatory, and the South African National Antarctic Program. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, University College London, University of New Mexico Art Museum, University of Texas McDonald Observatory, and Wesleyan University. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, Art in America, Nature, ARTnews, New Scientist, and The New York Times, among others. In 2022, the artist was elected as Full Member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society for her artistic practice’s contributions to science.
Nato Thompson is a curator, author, and cultural strategist based in New York and Philadelphia, known for his influential work at the intersection of art, politics, and public engagement. A champion of socially engaged art, Thompson has held a curatorial role at MASS MoCA and was Chief Curator of Creative Time, where he produced landmark projects such as Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot, and Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures.
He is the Founder and Director of The Alternative Art School, an online global platform connecting visionary artists through accessible, artist-led education. His writing has appeared in major publications including ArtForum, Huffington Post, and Art Journal, and he is the author of Seeing Power and Culture as Weapon.
Thompson holds degrees in Political Theory from UC Berkeley and Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continues to work with leading contemporary artists and institutions to reimagine the role of art in shaping community and culture.