Postcards...
... of my SPACE HEROINES are available at Archäologisches Museum in Hamburg.
Seven of my 13 heroines are currently on display in the show "Mythos Superhelden" at Archäologisches Museum in Hamburg. The museum produced postcards of all the existing motifs. The show can be visited until April 26th, 2026.
SPACE HEROINES
I developed SPACE HEROINES during my Artist in Science residency at ESA/ESOC in Darmstadt. In my preliminary research, I realized how strongly narratives of space exploration are dominated by male centered stories. Astronauts and pioneers have long been framed as heroic men, a pattern that continues today in the way space ventures are personified through figures such as Elon Musk.
The project explores what happens when artificial intelligence is prompted to generate alternative protagonists. I wanted to confront these dominant male figures with bold female counterparts. Yet what initially appeared empowering soon revealed itself as a reconfiguration of patriarchal fantasies. Trained on decades of male dominated science fiction, gaming culture, and cinematic imagery, AI reproduced narrow and exclusionary ideals of femininity. The heroines appeared hypersexualized and homogenized, with exaggerated proportions, standardized beauty ideals, light skin, able bodied physiques, and heteronormative coding. Their strength seemed aestheticized rather than emancipatory.
Generating the images became a demanding process. Older heroines appeared without faces, heroines in wheelchairs were given three legs, and to prevent half naked bodies I had to specify clothing in detail. I spent many nights refining prompts to push the system toward more diverse representations. The series was generated in 2022. Aesthetically it feels like light years ago. Gender equality, however, has not progressed at the same speed.
#art #conceptualart #space #esa #esoc #spaceheroines #superhelden #ai #ki #amh #spacetravel #raumfahrt #weltall #superheldinnen #bias #postkarten
Richard Webb
RTN
Swaantje Güntzel
Auf Distanz
