Tossin incrementally effaced a photographic print of the Moon’s surface to create Valuable Element. She repeatedly folded the print and scraped away its ink—a process that foreshadows strip-mining the Moon. The extracted ink, visually akin to Moon dust and collected in the glass vial, reminds us of the lunar resources proposed as ripe for the taking by space profiteers.
Valuable Element, 2022
archival inkjet print, inkjet dust, glass vial
34 x 34 x 1 ½ in.