(Photo: Tracey Moffatt/Courtesy of Stux Gallery [2])

'I share a birth date with Grace Kelly and Charles Manson. They’re my spiritual twins,” says Tracey Moffatt. The Australian photographer’s latest series, “Under the Sign of Scorpio,” considers 40 other powerful astrological sisters, from Marie Curie to Hillary Clinton, represented by the artist in costume against Photoshopped backgrounds of nebulae and explosions. The result pokes fun at the flaky, fake intimacy of the celebrity-weekly horoscope page (Demi Moore and Matthew McConaughey are both Scorpios, just like me!), while paying genuine tribute to the characteristics—fearlessness, stubbornness, secretiveness—most often associated with Scorps. “I’m not that obsessed, but I think there are some elements of truth in astrology,” says the artist, who notes in an accompanying essay that scorpions “can ‘cross over’ into dark worlds and come back unscathed.” And speaking of tough, hard-shelled creatures, Vogue’s Anna Wintour is one of Moffatt’s subjects. “Anna is a brilliant magazine editor who went into the cauldron of the fashion world,” says Moffatt with a sense of awe. “There’s nothing more bitchy than the fashion world.”

At Stux Gallery
Through February 10.

Related:

• Archive: “Art Features”
• Articles by Karen Rosenberg
• Table of Contents: Jan 22, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!