© Rhiannon Adam. They Should Have Sent Poets, from the Rhi-Entry series, 2025.

During the pandemic, Irish photographic artist 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 eight artists to join him on a week-long lunar mission aboard SpaceX’s Starship: the first civilian mission to deep space.

The mission’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, with the chance to achieve the seemingly impossible, to become the first out queer woman to venture beyond the Karman line. For three years, she immersed herself in the space industry, grappling with her mortality and the responsibility of representing marginalised voices.

However, in June 2024, Maezawa abruptly canceled the mission, leaving the crew to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives.

The work presented here blurs fact and fiction through moving images, photographs, and ephemera, reflecting on Adam’s psychological recalibration and her struggle to return to a “normal” life. It is often cited that reentry (or Rhi-entry) is the most dangerous part of spaceflight, and for Adam, this rings true, despite never having left our planet.

This presentation stands as a shrine to lost dreams and an urgent call for alternative voices in the space industry.

To find out more please go to the direct link.