In 2021, Rainbow Serpent released Playing the Cosmic Strings, a 1,200 sq ft billboard commission with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and unveiled in October 2021. It will remain on Heinz Hall for five years.

The universe is a never-ending source of fascination, inspiration and big questions. The exhibition SPACE – A Visual Journey explores the celestial frontier where artistic expression and scientific inquiry meet, and captures the grandeur of the cosmos through the eyes of astronomers and the interpretive visions of artists alike.

Through works by 14 different artists, we encounter questions like who we are in the face of eternity and when we leave our planet behind, what values we bring with us when we discover new worlds, and who has the right to dream about a future outside of Earth’s atmosphere.

Participating artists:

Rhiannon Adam (Ireland)

Mikael Owunna & Marques Redd (USA/Nigeria)

Mónica Alcázar-Duarte (Mexico)

Mackenzie Calle (USA)

Vincent Fournier (Burkina Faso)

Ivar Veermäe (Estonia)

Brooke Holm (Australia/USA)

Darya Kawa (Iraq)

Michael Najjar (Germany)

Matjaž Tančič (Slovenia)

Thomas Vanz (France)

Ming Wong (Singapore)

Cecilia Ömalm/Göran Östlin (Sweden)

Petri Eskelinen (Finland)

UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe is a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the intersections of Blackness and the cosmos. Curated by Key Jo Lee, MoAD’s Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs, the show invites visitors to reimagine Blackness not as fixed or earthbound, but as infinite—expansive, unknowable, and cosmically rich.

Inspired by Lee’s essay, “Gesturing Toward Infinitude: Painting Blue/Black Cosmologies,” the exhibition asks: What if we approached Blackness with the same wonder we bring to the universe? What if, like a black hole or distant star, Blackness could be a site of mystery, power, and transformation?

Featuring a global and intergenerational group of artists—including Lorna Simpson, Rashaad Newsome, Gustavo Nazareno, Harmonia Rosales, Didier William, and many more—the exhibition spans painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Works traverse the historical and the speculative, the scientific and the spiritual.

Three core themes guide the journey:

• Geo-Cartographic: Blackness mapped across earthly and celestial terrains.

• Religio-Mythic: Blackness as origin, cosmology, and creation story.

• Techno-Cyborgian: Blackness as posthuman—shaped by technology, hybridity, and the ability to move fluidly between identities. The posthuman is not one fixed form, but an evolving state of becoming, capable of multiple perspectives.

More than an exhibition, UNBOUND is a philosophical inquiry and sensory experience. A rich array of public programs, an onsite learning lab, and the museum’s first community-written labels ensure depth and accessibility for all visitors.

Ultimately, UNBOUND invites us to wonder: What else can Blackness be? When freed from institutional constraints and historical reductiveness, Blackness becomes luminous—an expansive mode of being, a cosmology of creative potential. The show invites us not simply to observe, but to wonder. To stand at the edge of the known and look out—into the dark, where unbound possibility lives.

Curated by Fotografiska, the group exhibition SPACE: A Visual Journey started its trayectory in Stockholm, traveled to Tallinn, and now arrives in Shanghai in a new iteration titled SPACE: Internal Illuminations. Co-curated by Fotografiska Global Exhibition Director Johan Vikner and independent curator Iris Long, the exhibition will be on show at Fotografiska Shanghai from 12 November 2025 to 8 March 2026. It explores the celestial frontier where artistic expression meets scientific inquiry, capturing the grandeur of the cosmos through the interpretive visions of artists.

Participating artists:

Brooke Holm

Cecilia Ömalm & Göran Östlin

Chen Yin-ju

Darya Kawa Mirza

Fu Hongshuang

Gao Yujie & Megan Smith

Jen Bervin & Charlotte

Lily Hibberd

Xin Liu

Michael Najjar

Matjaž Tančič

Mónica Alcázar Duarte

Mikael Owunna

Ming Wong

Minna Långström

Shi Zheng

Shireen Taweel

Thomas Vanz

Vincent Fournier

ZHANG Wenxin