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DYSTOPIA
 The society we live in often tends to direct our will
towards the spasmodic search for utopias.
We fill our heads with movies, TV series, advertise-
ments, and television shows that put us in front of
realities that seem true, but ultimately only provide a
vague impression of what life is in all its concreteness.
Yet often that vague impression is enough to induce us
to compare real life with those distorted realities. We
thus begin to invalidate ourselves and our surroundings
without reason, deeming everything not up to certain
standards. We identify with that character from our
favorite series and ask ourselves why we’re not as brave
and enterprising as him or why we don’t have an athlet-
ic physique like his or brilliant and ingenious ideas like
those with which he overcomes his difficulties.
We follow celebrities and influencers, business and
success gurus, fitness masters, models with sculptur-
al bodys, and we become more and more convinced
that those people have a perfect life, a perfect career, a
perfect relationship, and that’s why they’re happy. So
if we’re not happy it’s because we don’t live in those
utopias and therefore we must do everything to reach
them. And society also teaches us that those utopias
are achievable by everyone, which makes us feel even
28 more guilty when we fail.
We are all unconsciously conditioned by these subtle
beliefs, even those who do not want to admit it. But
the most incredible paradox about society is that while
it celebrates and promotes utopias almost as if they
were a cult, it itself tends to embody the diametrically
opposite value, that of dystopia.
When you read dystopian novels like “1984” by George
Orwell, “Brave New World” by Huxley, or “Fahrenheit 451”
by Bradbury, you realize that many characteristics of
those dystopian realities are already present in today’s
society, althogh in a less evident and extreme way.
We live in a society where most of the world capital
is invested in weapons and military equipment rather
than promoting scientific research, medicine, art, and
culture. As a species, we’ve got the potential to reach
the stars, to conquer them, and instead, we’re here
burning fossil fuels to enrich that 1% of the population
that holds 99% of the world’s wealth. Meanwhile, the
planet is frying, poverty is increasing, and it always
seems to be on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. Not to
mention that we have just come out of a pandemic.
We already live in a dystopia, but we are too busy
chasing utopias to realize it.
Dystopia as a narrative form has always fascinated me
a lot. Imagining a catastrophic or depressing future
based on real trends, typical of today’s world, is one
of the most effective ways to satirize, to offer a harsh,
albeit subtle criticism of the systems that govern our
lives. And I don’t think there is a better language than
visual art to tell about a dystopia. A language that can
be as raw and ruthless as needed and that is precisely
why it can go deep and stir consciences.
In “The Last Rose in the World” (page), for example,
I imagined a future world where there are no more
plants and the last existing rose is kept alive by a sort
of heart-machine. It’s a warning, it wants to tell you
“the world can become like this if we don’t safeguard
the environment”. The same goes for “A wonderful day
for a walk in the park...”(page) which instead expresses
in an ironic sense the fear of a future nuclear war.
I haven’t limited myself to imagining scary fu-
tures, sometimes it was enough for me to represent
what was happening in the news, as in “I Can’t
Breathe”(page) which tells the murder of George Floyd
by a Minneapolis police officer and the consequent
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riots it sparked in 2020. Or “Heroes”(page) which tells
the global health crisis of COVID-19.
Some artworks like “Money” (page) or “Animals”(page),
inspired by the music of Pink Floyd, of which I am a
big fan, instead paint human greed, corruption, and
the rot behind capitalism.
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 Lita derrum remporporro mincid ul-
luptisquam fugit ex excepro ex ex eo-
stota tiores arum ut eveliquia precto
blacernam volorep tatessim accum
quis deria duciis ventota que rem rest

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