Trickster Magazine

Rhiannon Adam doesn’t exactly blend in. Raised at sea on a boat with no fixed home, she’s spent her career telling stories of people on the margins – from remote islanders to off-grid communities. In 2022, she became one of eight artists selected by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, aka ‘MZ’, for the dearMoon project: a civilian mission around the Moon aboard SpaceX Starship rocket. For a mission designed to send artists – not astronauts – into the stars, Rhiannon was the only woman chosen out of more than a million applicants. Then it all fell apart. After three years of preparation, the project was quietly cancelled in June 2024, leaving participants adrift in the emotional and professional vacuum of a mission that never launched.

We caught up with Rhiannon at Fotografiska Tallinn, where she’s showing new work as part of the SPACE – A Visual Journey exhibition. We talk space, dreams, billionaire power trips, and the strange, lingering heartbreak of almost leaving Earth – but not quite.

The selection

Do you remember the moment you found out you’d been chosen to go to space?

Oh yeah. I was in Israel at the time. I’d won an award called the Meitar Award at Photo Israel, and they’d given me a grant to publish my book, Big Fence. It was the day of the book launch, actually – and I was supposed to give a talk about the book that night. So it was already going to be a memorable day. 

That morning, I got an email from the dearMoon team asking if I could jump on one more call. And by that point, I was like, “Seriously? How many more calls?” 

How many interviews had you done by then?

So many. At one point it seemed like Zoom calls every other week. We had to do group tasks, talk about how we’d handle crises, propose projects… it was endless. I think they were trying to assess how we’d work as a team under pressure, and how willing we were to jump when they said jump, but still – I just wanted them to put us out of our misery and let us know either way

What was different about that final call?

Usually there were several people on the screen, all very official. But this time it was just MZ. He looked at me and asked, “Would you like to go to space with me?” I said “YES,” obviously. Then I cried a little… and then I had to pull myself together and go talk about my book. It was like living in two timelines – past and future – at the same time. Totally surreal.

The Emotional Weight of It All

Signing up for a space mission means accepting you might not come back. Did that hit you in a real way?

Yes, absolutely. By the time I was selected, I’d already spent nearly a year applying. I’d flown to Houston during the pandemic, the dearMoon team had spent many thousands to cover my medical evaluations… I was all in. I knew the risks. The statistics aren’t great – not because the rocket would fail necessarily, but because not many people have done this kind of mission. The re-entry part is known as the most dangerous part of any manned space flight, by the way. That’s why my project is called Rhi-Entry… But ultimately, I felt like the project was bigger than me. I wasn’t scared of dying. I felt ready.

How did your family react?

Well, my mum got me a personalised NASA license plate and license plate holder that said “To the Moon and back” for my car and wanted to smuggle herself into my bags. My aunt was quietly cautious, but all in all, pretty supportive. My friends weren’t that surprised, a couple basically said, “Of course you’re going to space. If anyone was going to do something this insane, it’d be you.”

Did you spend time with the other crew, and are you still friends? 

Yes! We met each other digitally through the selection process before we even met in 3D through all of the group calls and tasks.   

The selection process was isolating in some ways, but once the crew was chosen, we bonded – there are so few people on Earth that could ever have related to being selected for such a mission. I don’t think any of us could quite believe our luck.. The selection process  was a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – if you were arrogant or selfish, you were cut out of the candidate pool. The people who remained were the most humble, the most willing to work towards the common good. We didn’t even know each other’s last names at first. It stripped everything down to the essentials – who you are when everything else is removed. What’s funny is even with people like Steve Aoki… I had no idea who he was at first. He was just “Steve” on a Zoom call, joking about us having the same hair in zero gravity.

Also, when the end came… well, there’s nothing like a bit of trauma bonding. For some of us, the monumental loss brought us even closer together.

There’s no space for mistakes in space, so we had to become each other’s life support on Earth. Some of us delayed major life moves to prioritise the mission. We were all 100% in. You couldn’t do it any other way.

Being the Only Woman

You were the only woman selected. That must’ve come with pressure.

Oh, it was heavy. I felt like if I made a wrong move or said the wrong thing, it would be “because I’m a woman.” The emotional one. The reckless one. The woman who wasn’t ready. I had to be perfect, or so I thought.

The irony is, I think I was chosen for being my full, imperfect self, and that is exactly what I wanted to show the world. I wanted to move away from the white male hero trope that dominates the image of space – but then I felt I had to strip my individuality away to not to let womankind down... and then I was inadvertently upholding the image that I was initially trying to break down. I became this everywoman character, someone that other women could project themselves onto. It was a position of immense privilege and really lonely. I lost myself a little… 

The Cancellation

The cancellation of the dearMoon mission must’ve been a blow. Did it feel personal?

It felt like a break-up. I’d spent years searching for the Moon, and now I can’t even look up at it. It’s like seeing an ex everywhere – on TV, in magazines, lighting up the sky. You can’t escape it. 

What were your initial emotions when you found out – and how have they changed over time?

When the project got cancelled, it was like re-entry into my own reality – a very different reality. In a way, I was free. But in a way, I wasn’t – my mind was opened to experiences and possibilities that few ever have the opportunity to experience, and I couldn’t just shut it all away. I saw into a dystopian future too, and I had become afraid of what the future of space could lead to – I’ll never be free of that. 

There was a lot of media around dearMoon, and that also had its effect. Before, when I gave someone my business card and they Googled me, it was “Rhiannon Adam and her work.” Now it’s “queer this” and “queer that.” As a documentarian, that’s made my life harder. I can’t disappear into communities with conservative family values anymore; my personal life is far more accessible.

So yeah – the project took two things from me. One was my anonymity. The other was a kind of optimism I’ll never fully get back.

Who Gets To Dream?

At any point, did it feel like a scam?

No. It never felt anything other than real. SpaceX welcomed us in. We met Elon Musk. We got invitations from NASA. We were very much part of it.

But the sad thing is, billionaires are the ones who control space. They decide who gets access. When you can buy anything or do anything, everything means nothing. Maezawa left so many of us in debt as we were developing projects to uphold his mission’s plan. We’d talked about production grants but those finer details hadn’t been ironed out, so we all frontloaded our efforts in good faith. Everyone but myself and one other person signed away their rights to any work related to dearMoon. He said he cared about art – and then cancelled the whole thing casually without considering the impacts to our lives or our financial ability to continue to make art, while drinking a $30,000 bottle of red wine on Instagram stories.

It really makes you think: who gets to dream? It’s sad to me that those with the greatest access to these otherworldly dreams seem the least able to connect with them. 

Did you get any compensation or kind of support?

No, nothing. I wasn’t in it for the money, obviously, but I’d be silly not to mention that this project would have changed our lives completely on that front… But when the project was cancelled, it was handled very irresponsibly. We had been used to justify a billionaire’s vanity project and then when we were no longer needed we were dropped without a care. To go from a moon trip to being discarded – and in my case – blocked from his social media is such a crash down to a reality I’d rather not be in. I could have understood if he’d said “the dearMoon project was about inspiring world peace and now I feel that the money for dearMoon would be better used to achieve that goal on Earth” and he’d started a relief fund I’d have found it easier. If he’d said he wanted to start an art fund to give grants to more artists working on similar topics, I’d have got it. But he cancelled this project and seemingly symbolically gave up on his dream of world peace in favour of fast cars, superyachts and golf.

We would’ve been grateful and happy to have been involved in helping him do something meaningful. But instead, all we got was radio silence.

Who Owns the Sky?

You’ve said before: space colonization is already happening – here on Earth. 

Exactly. People think of space as abstract – a dream… a utopia… a dystopia. But it’s real, and it has real consequences. If Musk decided to side with Russia, he could shut off Starlink and plunge Ukraine into digital darkness. It’s power without oversight. International waters. 

So… Who owns space? 

Whoever has access to it. And I don’t think we’re asking enough questions about that. So many people don’t even realize that the Moon landing was essentially an American power flex during the Cold War, not some innocent science mission. Space is not neutral.

Speaking of innocent science missions… what did you think of the Katy Perry-in-space stunt?

It was like a hen party in orbit – instead of Vegas, they just went to space. They marketed it as “empowering,” but honestly? It was offensive. There was one woman on board who was truly worthy of being there – Amanda Nguyen – whose story was completely overshadowed by the public spectacle. If you want to empower women in space, amplify her. Not Katy’s setlist.

I also don’t believe in the “straight up, straight down” kind of space tourism, where you float in 0G for 3 or 4 minutes and can’t achieve anything. It feels a little tone-deaf and wasteful. I cared about dearMoon because it was historic, and there would have been time to actually make work over the course of a week-long voyage. 

Dreaming, Still

What first drew you to space?

I’ve never been a space nerd. But I’ve always felt like an outsider – I grew up on a boat looking up at the vast night skies and feeling small. Space felt like the ultimate “other place.” For queer people, space holds this symbolic promise: no laws or policing against your very existence – just infinite possibility and freedom.

Of course, access is still heavily controlled, mainly by the military or government agencies. But I thought, if I could just get there, even once, maybe I could hold the door open for others. Maybe someone would look at me – messy, queer, flawed – and think, “Hey, maybe I can go too.” Maybe they would imagine themselves as participants in the big conversations that will affect all of us on Earth, instead of feeling that it’s abstract and out of reach. 

One of my favorite pieces in the exhibition is the Monument of Broken Dreams – a rocket part of the failed SpaceX rocket test that you were gifted. There’s something so poetic and darkly funny about it: “I almost went to space and all I got was this lousy metal piece.”

Yeah, it was given to me when the project was still “live” – at the time it felt almost bad taste, like a reminder of our fragility, a reminder that we were putting our lives in the hands of SpaceX, with no guarantees. Then after the project was cancelled, it became this  monument to lost potential, but it’s also a way to poke fun at the absurdity of it all. 

How have your emotions evolved – from cancellation to now, standing in Fotografiska Tallinn with the finished work?

Honestly, I’m positively surprised. The project’s been really well received. When I started working on it, I was just disappointed and angry, it was raw and very soon after the ending – I had no idea how others would perceive it. I had to make a choice: either smile and stay silent, or be my loud, critical self and risk burning bridges.

Staying silent might have meant another billionaire would come along and offer me a ticket to space at some other juncture. But I didn’t want to be a hypocrite, and I’d like to think I was selected because of the raw authenticity of my work. If I lost my authenticity at the project’s end, then MZ would have taken everything… and at least I have that. 

I chose to speak up in a way, for all of our crew. I want those who pick up a project like this in the future to really think about their responsibility to the people that they embroil.

There’s another beautiful piece at the exhibition that reads ‘’I spent three years searching for the Moon – and now I can’t even look up.’’ What does it feel like to see the Moon now?

I’m trying to fall back in love with it. But it’ll take time.

Right now, it’s a reminder of what almost was. Still, I hope people see the humour in the work, too. I’m not here just to wallow. I’m poking fun at the system, at myself, at the whole cosmic joke of it all. It’s not just my story – it’s everyone’s.

Well, I truly hope one day you’ll be able to look at the Moon like you did before. That you and the Moon can be friends again.

Ah, thanks. So do I!

SPACE – A Visual Journey is on view at Fotografiska Tallinn until 18 January 2026