AVENIR

At the construction site of her friend’s house, Sarah Bovelett discovered her love for spaces. Standing inside the uncompleted building, she delved into her imagination, thinking of everything an open structure could mould into. She was 13 at the time, and, nine years on, this is a theme still prevalent in all her work.
 

Unfinished.
 

“When a project is finished, I don’t like it anymore,” says Bovelett. “I really like to leave some things undefined and open. It can never actually be finished; you could always continue and change.”
 

On the outside, she exudes childlike candour (jumping into cold water is her greatest pleasure), marked by an abiding smile that is as innocent as it is instinctive. But that masks a character filled with curiosity and resolve (she hopes her work opens people’s eyes to situations).

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She’s still searching for her career path. For now, Bovelett is at Berlin-based firm raumlabor as an interior architect, having studied the subject at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. But she doesn’t like to define herself as one, preferring to work on projects within multiple disciplines.

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One of them is an artefact created in collaboration with her university friend Maria Beaumaster. It is part of an international collection of 100 artworks being sent to the moon. In an effort to develop some creative culture for future moon habitation, the European Space Agency (ESA) aims to launch the Moon Gallery in 2022. The team behind it describes it as a “Petri dish-like gallery” with the artworks compacted on 10x10x1cm plates on the exterior panel of a lunar lander.

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Bovelett and Beaumaster worked on the connection between the moon’s revolution and menstruation; the lunar cycle lasts 29.5 Earth days, while the global menstrual cycle averages 29. Their artwork comprises a glass orb infused with menstrual blood. Dried and pigmented, the blood is then filled into the heated orb, hardening up as it reacts with the glass. “We collected blood from three women, chosen randomly. We don't want it to be about the person; we want to make menstrual blood a relic,” says Bovelett. They call the project Artemis 11.
 

“We want to put a woman on the moon,” she states firmly. Artemis is the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology. She’s the twin sister of Apollo, the namesake for the spacecraft in the first manned mission to the moon back in 1969, Apollo 11. Artemis is also the name of the NASA program that intends to send the next humans to the moon in 2024.
 

Artemis has three incarnations that each stand for something distinct. “But only together, they are a whole,” explains Bovelett. “Habitation on the moon should be about collaboration and congruity, and Artemis really stands for that.”

Twelve humans have landed on the moon. All of them were men.

“If people will be able to live there, the fact that a woman should be able to go to the moon as an astronaut isn’t something I have to explain,” says Bovelett, the smile wiped off her face. She’s scowling now. “It should be obvious, why do we even have to talk about it?”

On October 18, astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch took part in the first-ever all-women spacewalk. Bovelett calls it progress. “People are standing up and realising its importance.” But she reiterates that the priority now should be a female astronaut landing on the moon. “It still hasn’t happened, and it’s very wrong.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I ask her how she felt when her submission was accepted. Her rumination slowly breaks into a smile. “It was very strange. It is working together with the ESA. It’s something so smart, so technical; not my usual vibe.” Her eyes give away her exhilaration. “In a couple of years, there will be this thing on the moon I can point to and say: 'See that little thing? It's very small, but I made it!’”
 

For now, the Moon Gallery remains, almost fittingly, unfinished. While prototypes of the project can be found in exhibitions across Europe, the actual glass sphere will only be found on the moon. “A gallery should have visitors,” says Bovelett. “It’d be crazy if someone texts me, ‘Hey, I was on the moon. I saw your gallery! Super nice,’” she continues, only half-jokingly.

That’s one big step for her. And a giant leap for womankind.