Artist statement

Atopia arises from the need to seek alternative ways of living, thus debunking the myth of “the only possible story”, that of a society in which capitalism and consumerism are dominant.

It is an inquiry that starts from the reading of great modern thinkers who identify posthumanism, and its attempt to overcome anthropocentrism, as a possible path to follow in order to resolve the great climate and social crisis we are experiencing, caused by human being’s presumption of feeling at the top of reality.

Altough the times of anthropocene are dark, Hölderlin reminds us that: “Where there is danger, what saves also grows.”

For about three years, therefore, we searched for people and small communities that could embody the concepts we had studied, discovering in them new values, a new spirituality, a new way of “dwelling” the planet based on the harmony of living in silence, rituality, contemplation and meditation.

The deep awareness of the complexity of nature and the great sense of responsability towards the totality of existence are the characteristics that have most affected us, marking and teaching us.

We immersed ourselves completely in this world, which was almost unknown to us, living with the people we chose to portray, establishing deep bonds that could overcome the distrust created by the photographic medium to arrive at a narration on the border between the real and the unreal, where the lives of the protagonists intertwine and returned not as individual stories but as part of a single plot.

The goal of this work is not to provide definitive answers to a difficult problem, which represents the greatest challenge humanity faces, but to offer a “possibility to stumble upon” in order to stop and reflect.