Simone Aaberg Kærn, in the early 1990s, began working with projects relating to surveillance and control. This, however, soon turned into a fascination for the unreachable and impossible task of floating: flying in the space. Through animated flying videos, such as Air (1994), wanna fly (1995), and Royal Greenland (196), Simone Aaberg Kærn investigated and soon found a symbolic free space in the air. At first, it was animated spaces, in which she flew across the skies of Copenhagen, New York and Greenland seeking the limits of gravity and individual unassisted human flight. Soon after Simone Aaberg Kærn achieved her own flight certificate in order to produce the work, Sisters in the Sky. This was demanded by Anne Noggle, one of the female pilots, who also was portrayed in the work Sisters in the Sky (1997).
Simone Aaberg Kærn’s painted portraits of female fighter pilots from Second World War was shown at and acquired by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk. Sisters in the Sky is an impressive aesthetic and intellectual peephole of how women at that time could realize their dream of flying in a time of hardship. In the painting and sound installation, Simone Aaberg Kærn narrated their stories with a poetic, political and feministic gesture and introduced the notion of aero feminism – an aero feministic sisterhood across cultures and generations. Simone Aaberg Kærn began her intensive engagement with women pilots, which endures to this day, with Sister in the Sky, about former American women pilots of the Second World War, Aaberg Kærn was able to trace several still living pilots. In order to get the women pilots to collaborate with her, Aaberg Kærn however had to learn to fly a small plane herself and earn the respect of the women pilots.
