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2021 to now

Venus Project

Context

The planet Venus has been the focus of two years of creative research through painting and archival investigation. This work explores Venus in its dual conception as Earth’s twin planet and as a contested repository for over 2000 places named after renowned women and mythological females of Earth. Overlooked in science and deemed of marginal significance in recent Western imagination, Venus is on the cusp of new era of discovery with at elast seven international missions expected to launch at the end of this decade, offering a chance to reimagine our twin planet.

Venusian Rover, EPFL Pavilions, Lily Hibberd 2022. Photo Julien Grémaux

In 2023, Lily embarked on an artist residency with the Science Museum in London, as part of a two-year project titled “Venus: new perspectives towards 2031”, to establish an open relationship with Venus through reflexive and collaborative work and engage creative and scientific communities in reimagining our relationship with this overlooked planet.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principle arts investment and advisory body.

Venus Sees Earth

A Time Atlas in Reverse

Venus has observed Earth over billions of years. In the eyes of our twin planet, we have evolved in parallel, and we are bound together both geologically and in shared interplanetary consciousness. Venus recounts this history in reverse starting from our common origins in the birth of the Solar System. This artist book tells its story through an atlas of astronomical images of Earth seen by Venus. On their voyage through the Solar System, these images look back at Earth, echoing Walter Benjamin’s 'Angel of History’. This artist book takes the form of a photoroman, interwoven with extraterrestrial images taken by NASA probes.

The Violence of Venus

This painting of five panels maps the entire surface of Venus, locating the warrior women, heroines and terrifying mythological figures named after violent places on the planet by the International Astronomical Union since 1979.

The Violence of Venus, oil on linen, five panels, each 70 x 120cm, Lily Hibberd, 2025

Portraits of a female planet

Since late 2021, the process of painting has involved intimacy and close sensory proximity with more than 120 sites by making haptic paintings of the surface of Venus. These works interpret the uncanny imaging of the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument used on NASA's 1974 Mariner 10 and 1990 Magellan missions. These paintings also serve as portraits of Venus and the archive of women whose names strangely and sometimes problematically inhabit its landscapes, each one officially named by the Venus Task Group of the International Astronomical Union. Finally, they reveal that the selection of place names by the International Astronomical Union needs to more justly represent the world’s cultures and genders.

Cosmos Projects