Cassandra Klos: Cosmic Origins

Cassandra Klos: Cosmic Origins
Oct 22, 2026 – Jan 4, 2027

United States United States — Art Center
1317 W. Pettigrew St.
Durham, NC 27705

The Duke Center for Documentary Studies presents Cosmic Origins by photographer Cassandra Klos, on view from 22 October 2026 through 4 January 2027, in partnership with Duke University's MFA|EDA program and the Duke Space Initiative. Bringing together photographs, artifacts, and ephemera, the exhibition explores humanity's relationship to space, scientific exploration, and the possibility of life beyond Earth through Klos's long-term project Mars on Earth.

Klos, born in 1991, documents her experiences as an analog astronaut—an astronaut who participates in Earth-based simulations designed to replicate the conditions, challenges, and isolation of space exploration. Through her projects, she has participated in five simulated space missions in the United States and Poland, serving as artist-in-residence at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah, from 2015 to 2017, and later commanding Crew 181, the first full crew of artists in a Mars simulation. She has also worked as crew journalist for the Selene II mission at HI-SEAS in Hawaii and commanded the inaugural mission at the SAM Habitat in Arizona, built on the Biosphere 2 site.

With pressurized spacesuits, freeze-dried food, robotic companions, and Mission Control waiting back at "home," Klos's photographs visualize what life beyond Earth might look and feel like for the first cosmic explorers. Made across space analog sites and scientific communities around the world, the images document real research while inhabiting a space between reality and fiction, where participants rehearse futures that do not yet exist. The simulation analog serves as an extreme environment like the conditions of lunar or Martian habitation, allowing investigation into how humans can live and work in isolation, confinement, and reduced sensory conditions.

The exhibition includes artifacts and ephemera from Klos's long-term fieldwork, including spacesuits and other mission materials, as well as work originally produced for National Geographic that will be exhibited together in the CDS Kreps Gallery for the first time. The immersive exhibition blurs the boundaries between documentary evidence and speculative imagination, inviting viewers into a future that is already being rehearsed. "While this work references science fiction, it is equally concerned with environmentalism and human futures," Klos has said. "As we learn how we might live in space, we are also learning how we might live better on Earth."

Klos holds a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and an MFA from Duke University's Experimental and Documentary Arts program. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston and the Cassilhaus Collection and Gallery in Chapel Hill, and in festivals such as the Copenhagen Photo Festival, Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, and the Lagos Photo Festival. Her work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, TIME, National Geographic, and The New York Times, among other publications. Most recently, she served as a New York Times photography correspondent covering NASA's Artemis II launch in 2026.

Using photographer Frank Hurley as a referential figure in storytelling, Klos's documentation highlights the significant interplay between documenting human endurance in the harshest conditions and inspiring future generations to explore the unknown. The visual archive serves as both a historical record and a source of inspiration for storytellers, artists, scientists, and explorers, underscoring the necessity of both imagination and resilience in the pursuit of space exploration.

Image: Nightly Patrol, 2015 © Cassandra Klos


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