“Deep Space Laundry”

Deep Space Laundry, curated by Jon Feinstein in celebration of July 2019\'s 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, looks at outer space as a zone hovering between sci-fi mythology, attainable future, and place ripe for discovery. The collection of photographs – in most cases, one image per artist – poses a constellation (pun very much intended) bridging different, often pop-culture and media-soaked reflections of the interstellar. Some artists, like Amelia Bauer and Cassandra Klos, use desert landscapes as stand-ins for imagined territories you might see in films like Star Trek or Flash Gordon. What might look like a Martian landscape, is just some rocky terrain in New Mexico or Utah. Artists Azikiwe Mohammed, Djeneba Aduayom, and Jacque Njeri\'s images pull references from Afro-futurism – a movement extending from the early 1990s thru today\'s Hollywood blockbuster Black Panther and beyond, which look at African Diaspora and liberation through a lens of science fiction and technology. And then there\'s the absurdism of Jacob Haupt\'s hilariously cartoonish and obviously faked image of a spandex-clad "astronaut" shooting into space while giving the thumbs up. While this collection of images is unlikely to unlock the secrets of the galaxy, the future of space travel, or how to discern a certain president\'s tweet that the moon is part of Mars, it serves as an entertaining and sometimes critical extension into what lies above and beyond.