Now, one of her creations is making its way to a truly out-of-this-world location: the moon. Talk about a literal career high!
Choen Lee’s “Who Wants To Live Forever?” is one of 47 artworks selected to be part of the MoonMars Museum gallery in the LifeShip Pyramid, a golden monument to be sent and deposited onto the surface of the moon.
The Pyramid is part of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, designed to celebrate and preserve Earth’s life and story. It will contain, among other things, seeds from 100 species; the complete human genome; the stories, wishes and prayers of 25,000 people; and a message to future civilisations by the Interstellar Foundation.
Blue Ghost departed Earth on Jan 15 and is expected to reach the surface of the moon on March 2. Its main mission is to deploy and execute 10 Nasa science experiments there, as well as deposit commercial payloads such as the LifeShip Pyramid that contains Choen Lee’s art.
According to her, “Who Wants To Live Forever?” explores human mortality, and how we upgrade or augment our bodies to extend or improve the quality of our lives.
“Who’s to say how much further we can go with this as tech advances? Perhaps one day we’ll be able to grow new parts in the lab,” she told FMT Lifestyle.
“Will our consciousness survive as we replace our ageing and rotting body parts with synthetic ones? Will we continuously replace parts that make us forever young even as the mind continues to accumulate experiences?”
Choen Lee became involved in the project in 2023, after responding to an open call by the MoonMars Museum for artwork about DNA. Selected works, they had said, would be displayed in a 3D gallery and placed on the moon.
Intrigued and already possessing a body of work on the subject, the Klang Valley-born artist decided to give it a shot. She admitted to originally thinking it was for a virtual gallery event, not an actual lunar landing.
“Later I was informed I was selected. Only then did I realise the moon mission was for real,” Choen Lee said, speculating that her artwork may have been chosen thanks to the narrative or overall body of her work.
Choen Lee’s art was engraved onto a 25mm nanofiche at 100,000 DPI and placed into Lifeship’s pyramid-shaped capsule. Accompanying it are 46 works from other renowned artists such as Paul van Hoeydonck, the first man who had artwork installed on the moon in 1971.
The number of artworks represents the 46 chromosomes in a human body, with some individuals possessing 47.
Choen Lee, who believes the combined artworks tell a story of humanity’s hopes and aspirations, said it is “brilliant” that they will be on the moon forever – hopefully, one of her descendants will be able to see it!
She also views the project as a major first step towards a future where interstellar commercial payloads will be common.
“For now, it’s like those early explorers to Antarctica or the early men who tried to reach the summit of the Himalayas. It’s just to say and prove we can do it – so we do it,” she said.
“Perhaps it will pave the way for us all to do more, lifting the tempurung from the katak.”
Follow Choen Lee on Instagram.