Anish Kapoor Plans to Send Sculpture to Space

Anish Kapoor, a Turner Prize winner never afraid of controversy, has planned his next project: sending a sculpture into space.

Exactly what the piece is remains a mystery, but he told times of london This week, it will consider questions like: “What is enough? What can withstand the vast, eternal space of space? It’s ambitious to put something into space visible from Earth.” Kapoor said the sculpture “might” involve mirrors.

Yes, it’s ambitious, but Kapoor isn’t the first to attempt such a feat (or stunt, depending on how you look at it). As my colleague Emily Watlington writes in american art 2023 has seen similar performances from artists ranging from Jeff Koons to Tavares Strachan. Sending art into space, she wrote, “underscores the idea of ​​the private space sector as a plaything of the super-rich.”

Who is funding Kapoor’s latest project? he won’t tell times of londonsaying only that the job would cost nine figures and that his supporters “are not necessarily Americans.” Koons confirmed that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX provided funding for Koons’ project, but he was not among Kapoor’s backers.

Kapoor later made a clearer point, condemning Musk’s funding of figures like Tommy Robinson. Tommy Robinson is a far-right activist whose Islamophobic posts have won him a following in the UK. “I can’t stand Musk’s attitude towards space, which is deeply rooted in money and crude capitalism,” Kapoor said. “I also object to his political influence in the UK.”

In addition, Kapoor also said, “Space politics are quite disgusting at the moment. Instead, we want to launch a useless piece of art, which is a rather magical thing. People who support me agree with this.” It is confusing how the 125 sculptures created by Koons on the SpaceX rocket can be considered more useful to society, but it is so.

this era This article was published the same week that the Manfred Palace announced a Kapoor exhibition in Venice during this year’s Biennale. Kapoor is also preparing to open an exhibition this month at the Lisson Gallery in New York, which represents him.

While the works in both exhibitions may be smaller than those Kapoor plans to launch into space, the artist says he has never seen a sculpture as large as the one he is working on. Kapoor failed to refute accusations that sending art into space is complicit in what some scholars call “celestial colonialism,” “the aim of poetically occupying unoccupied places.”