Imagining the invisible

Since the first "views from above", taken from a balloon in the mid-19th century, fascination with aerial views has grown steadily, in tandem with technological advances and the conquest of space. The magnetism exerted by cosmic iconography oscillates between wonder and disquiet. Artists seize on aerial mapping technologies as tools of surveillance, or imagine what has yet to be observed, depicting in the process more or less optimistic visions of our planet and the omnipresent control systems that surround us, as witness Markel Redondo's works, archaeologies of a new type of ruin, or Leah Desmousseaux's clichés born of an immobile voyage. Representations of that which is not visible from our own point of view fuel both hopes and fears. Blaise Schwartz asks us: are we strangers to our own world? What is invisible arouses curiosity and leaves potential room for a new apprehension of space, as illustrated by Yannis Khannoussi. But the unknown remains a threat. Space images offer a window onto distant worlds, but also materialize the extent of our ignorance, stimulating our desire to discover, feeding the fantasy of another form of life, but also scientific research, supporting the need to explore the abysses of our galaxy.