ARTstronomical Feat

Lakshmi Mohanbabu is floating on air quite literally. She has every reason to feel over the moon with her ‘Cube of Interaction’ art piece. It is one of the 100 artefacts that will take permanent residence on the surface of the moon.

The Moon Gallery Foundation launched the first permanent extraterrestrial art gallery, which is set to land on the moon by 2025. The artworks were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the NG-17 rocket on 19 February 2022. This precursor mission aims to understand the future possibilities for art in space and strengthen cooperation between art and space sectors.

Lakshmi is the first and only Singaporean artist to be invited to participate in the Moon Gallery mission. The result of these observations will serve as a source of priceless learning experience for future space artists.  

Based in the Netherlands, the Moon Gallery Foundation carefully curated each artwork including Lakshmi’s.

Lakshmi is an architect and a fashion designer by training who spent her formative years in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. She invited me to her showroom on a Friday afternoon just before a long weekend. We immediately connected and chatted about her journey as an artist.  

Just like her larger-than-life body of work that spans over 30 years, Lakshmi’s ‘Cube of Interaction’ conveys her beliefs to connect cultures, religions, and people from all walks of life.

“This universal symbol of integration is created with just a single continuous line that starts and ends at the same point,” she explains. “It represents the idea of continuing life cycles in a world striving towards infinite possibilities. As people, we are interrelated, interconnected and interdependent.” 

The one cubic centimetre sculpture was made possible through collaboration with a team at Nanyang Technological University, who tirelessly worked to find the right combination of materials that could withstand space travel and atmospheric conditions once on the moon.  They settled on anodized aluminium, which allowed for the colours Lakshmi required. Moreover, this cutting-edge technology creates more opportunities for 3D printing in aerospace and aircraft manufacturing in future.

‘Cube of Interaction’

‘Cube Interaction’ prototype structure and reflectance

The patterns seen on each face of both cubes were recreated from Lakshmi's paintings, “which revolve around the concepts of unity, diversity and complexity in humankind,” she tells me. 

“The Interaction series is literally ‘interacting’ in different forms and ways with different people. And now, with this tiny cube, we will have an interaction with space,” Lakshmi further describes.  The cubes that she had created are available in every colour that exists in the colour wheel. 

“People have different perceptions and interpretations in regards to colour, therefore the cube is inclusive of all,” she further discussed with me. “Our own meanings of colour and how each of our backgrounds, culture and history lead us to objects in different eyes.”

Another series that Lakshmi has is her NFTs collection. NFT stands for a non-fungible token, which means that hidden in those quirky artworks there's a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger using block chain technology to establish proof of ownership. 

To illustrate: She has 100+ original shoe designs that, similar to her cube collection, are available through her illustrations, NFTs, and finally 3D actual products.  

“I want the user to have the full experience,” she said.  Beautifully designed, this collection of stilettos has a style for everyone.  

Represented on the platforms LIQNFT in the Metaverse, Lakshmi taught me that producing the whole life cycle is what excites her most.  “Imagine actually wearing the shoes!” she exclaims in pure delight.  

“I studied architecture and then moved to fashion design,'' she recounts her journey that takes us back decades when she was a student at NIFT, Delhi (National Institute of Fashion Technology in India). 

Fashion design wasn’t exactly her first choice. She eventually warmed up to it.

“This broad and foreign study made me appreciate and value the full cycle of different design spectrums,” she says, as evidenced by her ‘Cube of Interaction’ work for the Moon Gallery that, in fact, she had already produced prior to submission.  

Laskshmi’s career is a colourful one. After graduating from architecture and further studying fashion design (she insists that she was only accepted due to her traditional and steady background as an architect), she found herself working for one of India’s top fashion houses and couturiers Tarun Tahiliani.  

She designed couture collections, then crossed over to jewelry design and found herself teaching Fashion Design in her alma mater.  

“It seems in my life one thing always led to another and the same goes for my artwork for the moon,” she reflects.

After relocating to Singapore with her husband 20 years ago, Lakshmi continued to teach fashion at LaSalle [College of the Arts] and pursued her passion for illustration.  She had drawn many things – from shoes to people – using all types of medium from acrylic and watercolour to chalk and ink. The self-taught artist’s strong illustrating talent gave life to her designs, which led her to showcase her work in a few art galleries.  

Commemorative event at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) with chief guest Minister Indranee Rajah

NTU event commemorating the launch of Singapore artworks to the ISS

“It was a chance meeting with a Frenchman in Singapore who liked my artwork,” recalls Lakshmi. “He basically said, ‘Your artwork has to be on the moon!” 

Lakshmi had never even heard of the Moon Gallery. Little did she know another turn in her career had begun.

It seems to me her artistic sense and infectious positive personality has no limits, just like her artworks.  Believe it or not, she is floating on air. 

Moon Gallery in ISS with view to earth. (Image: Nanoracks Moon Gallery Foundation)

I asked what else we could expect from her in the future. 

“Eating mooncakes shaped in my cubic work, with different colours symbolising different flavours – green for pandan, yellow for lemon, red for strawberry and so on... and visiting 3-metre sculptures of my cubes around Singapore,” she excitedly visualises with me.

We ended our chat in her showroom in such a wonderful high that I, too, was visualising wearing one of her shoe designs whilst visiting one of her cube sculptures soon to be spotted around the island in the near future.

Karmela | ws

Images: Lakshmi Mohanbabu | By-appointment-only Studio: 20-05 Cairnhill Plaza, 55 Cairnhill Road, Singapore 229666 | Email: Lakshmi@lakshmimohanbabu.com