Overview

Jessica Meir, Fragile Beauty

"If you can see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look more splendid than the moon". Galileo Galilei[1]

This exhibition of photographs by astronaut Jessica Meir shows Meir's impressions looking at Earth from the cupola of the International Space Station (ISS) during her seven months stay from September 2019 to April 2020 in NASA 61 and 62 missions.

Meir's mission was professional-engineering but its highlight was when, along with astronaut Christina Koch, she performed the first ever walk in space by two women. Some of her tasks included experiments to examine the effects of being in space on the female body.

Beyond her scientific tasks, Meir's view is universal, thought-provoking. The spectacular appearance of the earth, wrapped in the thin shell of the atmosphere, is revealed by Meir's definition as fragile beauty. The overlook allows for an overall picture, different from what we see when we are in the landscape, a picture that evokes thoughts and reflections about our place in the universe, the place of the earth and its fragility.

Meir grasps the views seen through the lens of her camera as an almost abstract aesthetic. In her words, in the video she prepared for the exhibition, Jessica sums up her feelings. Describing the beauties of the sights that evoked in her associations of modern art, she feels as if she is inside an exhibition of Impressionist Art.

In her photographs she chooses those images that are more spectacular, combining the color and texture of shorelines, the movement of sea waves, glaciers, deserts, the forces of nature, with no reference to the geographical places we have named, but to Nature itself as one unit without human-made boundaries. The colors spill like a palette of paints, and the texture like brushstrokes. A set of pictures depicts places at night, some brighter and some less illuminated, from which one can learn about our culture and its evolution.

Watching the individual pictures sometimes incites a sublime, meditative feeling, like the romantic look of a human at nature.

In the face of the sublime beauty, she marks the visibility from space of some environmental problems, melting of glaciers as a result of global warming, declining forests due to massive deforestation and turning of rain-forests into agricultural plots, fires, human footprint, and the dangers to our unique life-sustaining planet. Only by international cooperation can the problems threatening the human race be overcome, the space station is an example of success not only technologically, but of cooperation between nations.

Jessica Meir shares her feelings as she passes over the Middle East, which is in the orbit of the space station and has a relatively good visibility, and in her thoughts about her father’s Jewish roots and the family members who get excited thinking about her far above.

In the context of the exhibition, she remembers meeting Tal, after whom the gallery is named, when she spent some time with him in 2001 at her parents' home in Florida, in the town of Ponce Inlet. There, he painted the views of the beach and sea at night, in inverted colors, a picture that is currently in her apartment.

Jessica Meir's perspective is original and unique, reminiscent of a renaissance approach that connects the fields of science, technology and art. Space projects are multidisciplinary, require specific knowledge and skills and are task-oriented, but space exploration as a whole requires daring, inspiration, imagination and vision, as well as a spiritual component like the artist's soul, and the connection between them is original and powerful.

This exhibition is unique because it emphasizes the artistic aspect. Most of the exhibits on display in the science and space museums in Israel and around the world are exhibits that focus on the technological and scientific issues of the space industry and space agencies. In this exhibition, Jessica shares with us the excitement and wonder for the sights of the earth as defined in her words beauty, the incredible beauty.

The photographs of the landscapes of the earth and the videos displayed in the exhibition make it possible to experience even a little of Meir's impressions, an expression of her desire to share with as many people as possible her point of view and insights from the sights of our planet.

Her choice is twofold, in choosing the subjects of photography, and selecting about fifty images to display in the exhibition from hundreds of images she took during her mission.

The appearance of each of the photographs is impressive in itself, but when they are placed in an overall exhibition, the impression obtained is that the whole is larger than its parts, and the feeling in the exhibition is more than the sum of the images displayed.

Galileo's prophetic and inspiring words from the depths of the past connect with Meir's images and allow a unique look at our world and our place in the universe.

Ady Greenfeld, Curator, February 2021