photo: © Sacha Jafri
A new initiative by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) will send the first artwork to the surface of the moon. For the first-of-its-kind program, space industry organizations enlisted Dubai-based artist Sacha Jafri. The artwork titled ‘We Rise Together – with the Light of the Moon’ was revealed to the world on February 23 at the USA Pavillion at Expo 2020 Dubai.
The artwork will be placed on the surface of the moon later this year by Spacebit, a company developing technology for space exploration, and Astrobotic Technology Inc., a company providing end-to-end delivery services for payloads to the moon. The humanitarian aspect of the mission has been put together by Selenian, a pioneering UAE company that specializes in the curation of art in space. This mission is also the first-ever commercial lunar mission under the NASA CLPS, and the landing site of Jafri’s artwork will be marked as a world heritage landmark.
The placement of my moon-landed heart artwork, entitled: ‘We Rise Together – with the Light of the Moon’, aims to reconnect humanity to: ourselves, each other, our creator, and ultimately to ‘The Soul of the Earth,'” said Jafri in a statement. “With figures, entwined in love, reaching for a new found understanding of unity and consequential hope, as they embark on their journey of exploration from our inhabited planet to our uninhabited moon; through space and time, over mountain and star, to unlearn what we thought we knew and relearn everything through the hearts, minds, and souls of our children; the purest essence from which we have drifted so far, aiming to shine a light back on our broken planet, and start to heal its fractured heart. We rise together, with a like-minded goal of creating a new vision for our world, focusing on the five pillars that will allow humanity to thrive once again: universality, consciousness, connection, empathy, and equality.
Jafri’s work on the moon will be accompanied by NASA scientific payloads and other instruments and technologies from the mission partners. Ultimately, the artwork ‘WWe Rise Together – with the Light of the Moon’ will rest in the solitude on the moon eternally. Beside it, a series of Jafri Heart-NFTs created from his original piece, will launch alongside each stage of the mission – “from the rocket launch entering the stratosphere, the Earth circumnavigation, the moon sling-shot, the moon landing, and the legacy of the eternal artwork on the moon.”
Many of Jafri’s previous works have made headlines, with the most recent one being the world’s largest canvas painting, which was created in Dubai and sold for a record-breaking US $62 million. The mission aims to raise as much money as possible to aid concerns with health, education, sustainability and equality.
In a statement, NASA CLPS said, “On the 50th anniversary of our last landing on the moon, we are excited to announce this pioneering mission, collecting new data from our scientific payloads now heading to the moon, with exciting prospects of new findings, as technology and scientific research has developed immeasurably. But this mission is particularly exciting to us, as with the unique additional add-on of partnering with the private sector including Spacebit, Selenian, Astrobotic, and one of the world’s most celebrated Artist/Humanitarians Sacha Jafri, we will be placing the first official artwork on the surface of the ,oon, funds from which will serve to aid humanity back on Earth. An unprecedented moment in history, and a mission like no other, that we are proud to be a part of.”