Foreword / Maria Veits

The sub-issue accompanying the exhibition “Off to Space: Counternarrating the Cosmos” focuses on the themes raised by the exhibition’s artists and curator. Accompanied by the recrudescent colonial space ambitions that unfold amid the state of emergency,  the expanding  strain of racism, xenophobia and mysogyny enhanced by the virus outbreak brings back the discourse of ’unwanted’ and ‘prevailing’ race, gender, and class of the Cold War era. Unveiling repressed historical narratives, drafting counterhistories and possible futuristic scenarios, and analyzing the previous concepts of the future, the issue’s contributors create links between the present and the past and fill in the void spaces in complex historical fabric.

Main photo: Andréa Stanislav, Zero Gravity III, 50 cm x 50 cm, digital prints, refractive film on velvet. Courtesy: the artist

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