Imagine: a Soviet space station bedecked in hanging vines, hand-painted signs and inhabited by locals. That's what is happening in this sculpture by El Salvador-born artist Simón Vega, whose series Tropical Space Proyectos explores the effects of the Cold War on Central America. Here, the first modular space station, Mir, is re-interpreted as a shanty town. "Mir is a complex Russian word which means village, world and peace," Vega explained via email. "In this sculpture, it has been constructed, like most of my work, using materials and methods of construction drawn from third world informal architecture."
All 30 modules, 'powered' by bamboo solar panel parodies, encompass different facets of a society, such as a fully stocked market. The work draws its aesthetic from contemporary science fiction but also a sort of "Noah's ark syndrome," Vega explained, "where humans have made this beautiful earth uninhabitable and must depart in search of other worlds. But what would this be really like, with all the limitations? Who'd be able to get in? What would the rest of us do?
"... We can't really think about utopia without its opposite, but here they have been fused," the artist concluded. "Are there opposite world visions that could or should be mixed in order to function better as a community? As a global village? In peace?"
