Wearing a simulated astronaut flight suit, I run many relays back and forth along the front façade of the United Center in Chicago. The wind spastically controls the patterns of quick flights and descents of this tiny parachute strapped around the equator of my stomach. The parachute chosen for this performance was marketed to athletes for improving their resistance training. On my body it is more legible as an umbilical tether or a poetic and futile attempt to lift my body towards the atmosphere. My audience is mostly composed of the drivers of fast moving vehicles zipping by me on this cold day in October.

This gravity-bound exploration is one of several interdisciplinary works on the topic of elitism and exclusivity of space. My work is informed by over a decade of working as a public relations photographer for NASA, from 2004 until 2015. What has changed or improved in the accessibility of space or of scientific research data now since twelve white men walked on the Moon? How can I, as an individual artist, simulate or create dissonance between the canonized, solitary, white male Explorer?