The painting “Letters Flying through the Air” was born from a personal memory and a rare historical artifact: the diary of the artist’s father, Ilan Ramon, which miraculously survived the disintegration of Space Shuttle Columbia and was found among the debris, as if waiting for someone to read it. The image, inspired by the lyrics of a song by Eviatar Banai, “Diaries are burning, letters flying through the air,” expresses the tension between the annihilation of matter and the resilience of emotions, memories and words. As they scatter through space high above the Earth, the diary’s pages bridge the unimaginably vast divide, both physical and conceptual, between the words and their intended recipients. The painting itself becomes a page from the artist’s diary, creating a dual perspective that oscillates between Earth and sky. Within that perspective, an ongoing correspondence takes place, defying time and other boundaries.The painting, featured in the invitation for the exhibition “Living in Space” at The Israel Museum, was launched into orbit in 2022 and returned to Earth with astronaut Eytan Stibbe, a close family friend of Ramon’s. Thus, the painting’s space voyage became another line in that ongoing correspondence.