NO SPACE LIKE HOME

LOCATION

DOPENESS ART LAB, TAIPEI, TAIWAN

DATE:

DECEMBER , 2024

The Space Race, as we knew it, was a power struggle between countries to put man on the moon; the first country to achieve this would win. America arguably ‘appeared’ to win that race, and once that was completed, the public slowly lost interest, and manned space exploration took a back seat.

But here we are now, at the forefront of a new space race—this time to Mars, and this time very much commercially driven. With the knowledge that we have quite literally damaged planet Earth beyond repair due to our own greed, the race is back to save mankind by leaving our planet. The space race to Mars, spearheaded by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, is less about exploration and more about a corporate land grab across the cosmos. As these tech titans vie for dominance, their ambitions transform space into the ultimate frontier for brand expansion and profit. What was once a noble pursuit for humanity's future now resembles a high-stakes competition to stake claims on celestial real estate, where the race isn’t just to reach Mars, but to capitalize on its potential as the next big market.

‘No Space Like Home’ examines the idea that we’re not so much migrating to the stars out of curiosity but out of desperation and greed, masked as an act for the good of mankind. We’re heading to the stars with plenty of baggage. Are we about to repeat our greatest hits of exploitation and excess on a cosmic scale, or can we finally learn from our past mistakes? Can we trust big business to act responsibly on behalf of humankind, or will they see this as history’s biggest real estate, brand-building commercial opportunity? Welcome to planet Amazon, everyone.

Through this new body of work, I’ve explored the irony of our search for a new world when we haven’t quite figured out how to manage and look after the one we already have, and questions what deep space might have in store for us. Maybe, just maybe, before we start colonizing space, we should tidy up our own backyard first. After all, there’s no space like home...