I Got Us the Moon presents a monumental new work by Vancouver-based Argentinian artist Alejandro A. Barbosa, consisting of 280 individual prints tiled together to form an atlas of the moon. The image is drawn from the “CGI Moon Kit”, a publicly available digital asset for non-scientific purposes, created from data assembled by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera and NASA’s laser altimeter instrument teams. Combining his extensive research with this specific, aesthetic representation of the moon, Barbosa steps into the role of amateur astronomer – astronomy being notable as one of the only scientific fields to which hobbyists make meaningful contributions.

Motivated by the current potential of a new space race, with the moon viewed as an asset to colonise or mine for resources, Barbosa engages with histories of naming-as-claiming, while disrupting the exclusive naming rights of the International Astronomical Union. These rights were granted in 1982 by the United Nations as a way to standardise a proliferation of systems by which lunar features had, until then, been named. Barbosa references these prior histories, here renaming lunar geographical features after a wide range of figures: some unknown, others infamous, and many significant to queer and feminist histories. In doing so, Barbosa posits the Earth’s satellite not as a commodity or frontier, but rather as a parallel world: one that becomes a site of collective fantasies, alternate timelines, and queer world-building.

Alejandro A. Barbosa is a 2SLGBTQIA+ Latinx visual artist born in Argentina who lives and works on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Barbosa’s practice focuses on lens-based media and investigates the flaws of representation, queer lived experience, and the politics of looking. Barbosa holds an MFA in visual art from the University of British Columbia, a BFA in photography from Concordia University, and has been non-regular Faculty at Emily Carr University of Art + Design since 2022. In 2025 Barbosa presented their project Unsavoury Witness at SUM Gallery in Vancouver. Their work has been exhibited and collected in Canada, Argentina, Peru, and the United States.

Conversation and Publication Launch on Thursday, July 31

Curated by Elliott Ramsey

Please note: To access this exhibition space, guests need to descend a short flight of stairs. A digital version is available for viewing in The Diane Evans Bookstore.

Banner Image: Alejandro A. Barbosa, I Got Us the Moon (detail), 2025.