Context

Venusian Rover probes the surface of Venus through a series of 50 paintings presented as a three-screen video installation.

The work was commissioned for the major exhibition Cosmos Archaeology: Explorations in Time and Space curated by Sarah Kenderdine and Jean-Paul Kneib for EPFL Pavilions, Switzerland in 2022.

In 2024, Venusian Rover will tour with the exhibition to the new Astronomy Museum in Shanghai, China in 2024 and to the Science Gallery in Bangalore, India, in 2025.

Video Installation

In Venusian Rover, three looped videos of 8 minutes each are suspended in the gallery. Starting on the edge of Didilia Corona, the site of the first Russian landing of the Venera-4 probe on 18 October 1967, we travel through 50 Venusian sites in a sequence of dynamic painted scenes.

These painted images transform scientific imaging of the surface of Venus made by Synthetic Aperture Radar from NASAs Mariner 10 and Magellan missions of 1974 and 1990. Valleys, mountains, volcanic peaks, craters, and deep crevasses, all usually shrouded under the planet’s impenetrable atmosphere are all revealed.

As we travel through the painted terrain, other Venusian forms are made tangible in the bodies, myths and powerful female souls given to places on the planet. The attribution of female names or mythological figures to more than 2000 sites on Venus has produced an alternate imagination of our twin planet that reflects our own civilisation back to us.

Venusian Rover, installation views, 2022. Photos: Julien Gremaud.

Cosmos Projects