Bettina Forget
Bettina Forget is a visual artist, gallery owner, and art educator living and working in Montreal, Canada. Born in Germany, Bettina has studied at Central St-Martins School of Art in London, England, at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Art Education at Concordia University, Canada.
Bettina also owns and runs Visual Voice Gallery, which presents contemporary art exhibitions that create a dialogue between art and science. Bettina’s creative work a focuses on space sciences, inspired by her avid engagement with amateur astronomy. She was artist-in-residence at the Mont-Mégantic Observatory in 2018, and is the Researcher in Residence at the SETI Institute. Bettina has exhibited her artwork in the USA, Canada, Germany, Iceland, Singapore, and Nicaragua.
Bettina plans to work on her project Exoplanet Zoo, which proposes to develop a taxonomy of exoplanets with the use of VR technology. To this end, data sets associated with exoplanets will be integrated into the source code of geometric .stl files, generating a variety of exoplanet “species.” The menagerie of VR forms will make the variances and characteristics of exoplanets tangible and explore a variety of classification options.
Dovetailing with the exploration of 3D space, Bettina also plans to 3D-print a series of Moon craters which are named after women, a continuation of her Women With Impact project. This project highlights the underrepresentation of women in the science through an examination of lunar nomenclature. A crater is essentially a void, a hollow in the regolith. The void echoes the underrepresentation of women in positions of power, in the scientific canon, and in history. The void also speaks to its opposite: each crater is a result of an impact, a shattering of the calm surface. The women who made such an impact will be thrown into full relief with each 3D-printed sculpture.
