Lily Hibberd
Artist & Writer
About
Lily Hibberd is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working on questions around frontiers of time, memory and the cosmos. Her practice combines performance, writing, painting, photography, sound, moving image and installation art. Developed in collaboration with artists, scientists and historians, the resulting works have been presented in 68 major or international exhibitions, events and festivals since 1999.
The planet Venus has been the focus of the past four years of creative research through painting and archival investigation. Lily’s recent residency at the Science Museum, London, now extends to collections connected to Venus located around the world. She is also working with a team of artists, curators and scientists on Venus Conversations 2024-2034.
Lily is founding editor of the art writing publication unMagazine (2004), co-founder of Parragirls Memory Project (2012), and a frequent author and co-author of books, essays and journal articles. She holds a PhD by research practice and is a researcher at Université Paris Cité and EPFL Laboratory for Experimental Museology.
Themes
New Work
Venus Project
Venus is our closest planetary neighbour yet it is overlooked as a scientific, celestial and cultural object. Started in 2021, this interdisciplinary project embraces Venus as a way to appreciate what lies beyond the margins of our understanding. Artistic production includes a body of more than a hundred paintings of the surface of Venus, a narrative video, a painting installation of the violent women associated with Venus, the artist book ‘Venus sees Earth’, and a sculpture series embodying occlusions in radar data of the planet.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principle arts investment and advisory body
Venus Sees Earth
A Time Atlas in Reverse
Venus has observed Earth over billions of years. In the eyes of our twin planet, we have evolved in parallel, and we are bound together both geologically and in shared interplanetary consciousness. Venus recounts this history in reverse starting from our common origins in the birth of the Solar System. This artist book tells its story through an atlas of astronomical images of Earth seen by Venus. On their voyage through the Solar System, these images look back at Earth, echoing Walter Benjamin’s 'Angel of History’.
Venus Conversations 2024–2034
Launched at the Science Museum in November 2024, Venus Conversations is a series of dialogues and art projects launching from the planet Venus to explore cultural, scientific and artistic forcefields. This decade-long project is engaging creative and scientific communities to reimagine our relationship with this overlooked planet, organised in collaboration with French art critic and independent curator Annick Bureaud and Austrian art-science curator and scholar Claudia Schnugg. Visit the webpage for details.
The Violence of Venus
This painting of five panels maps the entire surface of Venus, locating the warrior women, heroines and terrifying mythological figures named after violent places on the planet by the International Astronomical Union since 1979.
The Violence of Venus, oil on linen, five panels, each 70 x 120cm, Lily Hibberd, 2025
Exhibitions & news
Éclipse [...] Diaphane in "SPACE: Internal Illuminations" at Fotografiska Museum, Shanghai from 12 November 2025 to 8 March 2026.
New book out in December 2025! Deep Fakes: A Critical Lexicon for Digital Museology, with Sarah Kenderdine, published by Taylor & Francis.
Venusian Rover touring in “Cosmos Archaeology: Explorations in Time and Space” at the National Museum of China in Beijing until 12 October 2025.
The Venus Project features in the book "Space Feminisms: People, Planets, Power", edited by Marie-Pier Boucher, Claire Webb, Annick Bureaud, and Nahum.
Venusian Rover, in "Cosmos Archaeology: Explorations in Time and Space", National Museum of China, Beijing
Contact
lilyhibberdstudio [insert@] pm.me
