What does it mean for art to exist everywhere humans have reached?
For Singapore-based interdisciplinary artist Lakshmi Mohanbabu, the answer is not metaphorical. Her work has quite literally travelled to both extremes of human exploration—outer space and nearly seven kilometres beneath the ocean’s surface—making her the only artist in the world whose work has occupied these two realms.
But to reduce her achievement to a record would be to miss the point entirely. Mohanbabu’s lifelong project, aptly titled Interactions, is not about spectacle or technological bravado. It is about something far quieter and far more ambitious: creating a visual language that belongs to everyone, everywhere.
An idea decades in the making
The origins of Interactions trace back more than three decades, to Mohanbabu’s time as a student at NIFT Delhi in the early 1990s. Even then, she was preoccupied with a deceptively simple question: What connects all human beings, regardless of culture, geography, belief, or discipline?
“I wanted to create something that people already know,” she explains, “but that they don’t always stop to think about.”
That idea—of resonance across boundaries—became the foundation of Interactions. The project was conceived as a body of work that would exist across every facet of human experience: the spaces we inhabit, the objects we touch, the environments we move through.
Eventually, Mohanbabu pushed the idea even further. If Interactions was meant to exist everywhere humans had reached, then it had to go beyond cities and galleries—to the furthest frontiers of exploration.
Five designs, nine universal elements
At the heart of Interactions are five core designs, each built using a single continuous line that begins and ends at the same point—suggesting creation, life cycles, and return.
Embedded within these designs are nine existential elements that Mohanbabu believes are universal:
creation, life cycles, shape, colour, movement, direction, energy, space, and time.
“These elements belong to everyone,” she says. “They are not owned by any one culture, religion, race, or discipline.”
The forms deliberately avoid specific symbols or references. Instead, they rely on duality—positive and negative space, motion and stillness, individuality and interdependence. It is a language that feels familiar without being prescriptive, allowing viewers to see reflections of their own beliefs and experiences within the same form.
From Earth’s orbit to the ocean’s hadal zone
Mohanbabu’s work first travelled to space through her association with the Moon Gallery, an international initiative that sent a curated collection of 64 artworks to the International Space Station (ISS). Two of her works—created in collaboration with scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU)—orbited Earth for nearly a year, passing over every city below.
Those same designs are now slated to become permanent installations on the Moon by the end of 2026, marking a rare and enduring artistic presence beyond Earth.
But Mohanbabu was not done.
“If space is one extreme,” she recalls thinking, “why not the opposite?”
That question led her to the deepest ocean.
Engineering art for seven kilometres underwater
The deep-sea project began nearly three years ago, through a collaboration with NuStar Technologies, a Singapore-based marine engineering firm, and JAMSTEC—the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.
JAMSTEC was planning JTRAC Expedition 405, a mission to deploy a deep-sea network designed to detect earthquakes and underwater volcanic activity—systems that could one day provide early warnings for tsunamis and save lives.
The alignment felt natural.
The final artwork consisted of three steel cubes, each measuring 10 centimetres per side, designed to withstand pressures 700 times greater than at the Earth’s surface. (For comparison, the Titanic lies at a depth of 3.8 kilometres; these cubes descended nearly twice as far.)
In 2023, the cubes were deployed from Chikyu, one of the world’s most advanced research vessels, and descended to the ocean floor. The artwork survived intact—making it the deepest art installation ever achieved.
When science reshapes art
None of this would have been possible without deep collaboration.
At NTU’s Singapore Centre for 3D Printing, Mohanbabu worked with Professor Changchuan (C.Q.) Lai, whose team was developing a breakthrough metal-printing technology called LAPIS. Unlike conventional 3D printing, LAPIS builds objects by laser-cutting and welding ultra-thin metal sheets—resulting in material that is 70% stronger than bulk steel.
The process was so new that Lai’s team had to build an entirely new machine to create Mohanbabu’s cube. The collaboration not only enabled the artwork but also helped launch the team’s subsequent startup.
In another project, Mohanbabu worked with Professor Matteo Saita, who used molecular-level manipulation during 3D printing to alter how metal reflects light. The result was a cube whose surface appears to change colour depending on light direction—without any physical texture.
“I couldn’t have imagined this on my own,” Mohanbabu admits. “That not knowing—that’s what excites me.”
Why send art where no one can go?
It is a question she is asked often: Why place art in locations most humans will never physically reach?
Her answer is resolute.
“The artwork is not the end point,” she says. “The journey is.”
Every expedition, every collaboration, every experiment becomes part of the artwork itself. The deep-sea descent was documented through photographs and video—the first time an artwork has been recorded at such depths—making the experience accessible to everyone.
Mohanbabu now plans to create scaled-up installations of the same cubes in public spaces, beginning in Singapore, accompanied by the full story of their journeys through space and sea.
A worldview shaped by difference
Much of Mohanbabu’s philosophy can be traced back to her childhood years in Kabul, where she grew up within a small but deeply interconnected international community.
“In the 1970s and ’80s, the world felt much larger,” she recalls. “You didn’t see diversity everywhere—so when you did, it mattered.”
Living among people from dozens of cultures and languages taught her that difference is not what divides us, but what reveals our shared foundations. That belief sits at the core of Interactions.
Making the invisible visible
Mohanbabu’s greatest challenge has never been technology—it has been simplicity.
“Explaining time, energy, or existence without overcomplicating it is much harder than making something complex,” she says.
Her solution has been reduction: a single line, a finite set of forms, ideas distilled to their most fundamental state. Viewers often project their own philosophies onto the work—seeing echoes of Hinduism, Islam, science, or systems theory.
“All of them are right,” she says. “Because it belongs to everyone—but it doesn’t belong to anyone alone.”
Art as a human constant
As humanity pushes further into space and deeper into the planet, Mohanbabu’s work poses a quiet but profound question: What do we choose to carry with us?
Her answer is neither flag nor monument—but meaning.
Art, in her view, is not decoration. It is a record of how we think, connect, and exist.
And now, somewhere in orbit, on the Moon, and deep beneath the ocean, that record endures.