Astronaut Cosmonaut, Street art mural in Kreuzberg, Germany
Astronaut Cosmonaut is a 22 by 14 metre stencil-style mural by French artist Victor Ash, painted in black on the tall white gable wall of the house at Oranienstraße 195, visible from Mariannenstraße at the corner of Skalitzer Straße. It shows a spacesuit figure during a spacewalk, helmet near the roof peak, one arm reaching out, the lower body dissolving into sprayed black shapes above a line of foliage.
The artwork was created by French artist Victor Ash during the 2007 Backjumps urban art festival. Its creation reflects the historical competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space exploration through visual language.
The title pairs the Western and Eastern words for a space traveller, pointing to the Cold War space race and to the Berlin Wall that once ran near the site. The wall was made available by GSW Immobilien, which also helped fund the project. Singer Mark Owen used the mural as the setting for his video for the song Stars, in which he walks through Berlin as an astronaut.
The mural is located at a street corner that is easily reached on foot and situated near several subway and bus stations. The best viewing angle is from across the street, where you can take in the full scale of the work.
The flag the figure appears to hold was never painted: it was the shadow of a real flag on the car dealership across the street, thrown onto the wall by a spotlight when the wind blew. The dealership is gone, so the effect has disappeared. The mural was made without a stencil despite its stencil look.
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