The Right Stuff -Ham the Chimp-
Size: 880 x 480 x 200 mm
Materials: NASA documents, cardboard, Japanese paper, paraffin wax, plastic board
Year of creation: 2020
The history of space exploration exists on the basis of many sacrifices.
Victims of attacks by the V2 rocket developed as a weapon during World War II, forced labor in factories, and so on.
After the war, a full-scale space race began, and there was a lack of information to send humans to the moon.
In order to obtain this information, various insects, reptiles, mammals, and fish, from small fruit flies to chimpanzees, were sent into space, and some of them lost their lives.
The motif of this work is "Ham," a chimpanzee who made a ballistic flight ahead of the astronauts on January 30, 1961, to confirm the safety of the U.S. Mercury mission to send humans into space (strictly speaking, ballistic).
Hamm returned safely to Earth and survived for the next 17 years.
The reason why the head of this work is translucent (paraffin wax) is because Ham is still an animal that has left its mark on history in space development, but I dared to use a translucent material that is difficult to see, with the meaning of "invisible existence" that we humans were able to safely go into space at the expense of many nameless animals. The space suit is made of translucent, hard-to-see material. He was not originally wearing such a space suit, but was made to wear a pressurized suit (also called a space suit), which was worn by humans in Project Mercury.
He is also an "astronaut".
English
Japanese