And she will be sending out a message of inclusivity to the universe with her Cube of Interaction
Growing up in Afghanistan, where her father worked for the United Nations (UN) and her family lived during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Singaporean artist Lakshmi Mohanbabu was exposed to diverse cultures. The small international UN community in the war-torn country was close-knit with people from around the world.
“It had a huge impact on me because such an experience made you a little bit more open to difference,” she explains. So it is no wonder that cross-cultural elements and philosophies feature prominently in her artistic practice. “I like to mix different elements, where they don’t look like they belong to one particular place but are a blend of different cultures and ideas.”
Take for example her Colours of Unity series of portraits, which focuses on the individual for who they are without religious, racial or social biases.
Mohanbabu explores a similar concept with her Cube of Interaction sculpture. “This universal symbol of integration is created with just a single continuous line that starts and ends at the same point,” she explains. “It represents the idea of continuing life cycles in a world striving towards infinite possibilities. As people, we are interrelated, interconnected and interdependent.”
The work will take permanent residence on the surface of the moon as part of the Moon Gallery in partnership with the European Space Agency’s Moon Mars Mission set to launch in the third quarter of 2022. Mohanbabu is the first and only Singaporean artist to be selected.
Related: A Sustainable City on Mars is in the Works, With Construction Beginning by 2054
Based on her ongoing Interaction series of paintings she started almost 30 years ago, the orange cube measuring a mere cubic centimetre (a larger iteration is pictured with Mohanbabu below) is one of the 100 artworks created by international artists to be featured in a compact 10 cm x 10 cm x 1 cm plate on the exterior panel of a lunar lander. “The Cube of Interaction represents the existential building blocks needed for any kind of habitat—even when we ultimately colonise the moon.”
While exploring the intersection of art, science, and philosophy, she looked at various symbols and found that the mandala best represents this relationship to the infinite, from the cycles of life to our circles of interactions with friends, family and communities, transcending borders, religions and races. In fact, the geometric design of this cosmic diagram can be seen across the globe within Hindu temples, Buddhist stupas, Muslim mosques and Christian cathedrals, among others.
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