He called it Utopia, a Greek word meaning there is no such place.

F. Quevedo

I know that utopia is on the horizon and that I will never reach it, because if I walk ten steps, utopia moves ten steps further away, and if I walk twenty, it moves twenty steps further. So, what is utopia for? That's what it's for: to walk.

F. Birri / E. Galeano

The Cro-Magnons' answer to the eternal human question: what am I and where am I? was different from ours: animals were the guardians of the world and the universe. Behind every horizon, there were always more animals.

J. Berger

The memories of my childhood are those of awakening to the joy of seeing and understanding on a wonderful island: lots of friends and family, games in the street, the clatter of my mother's sewing machine, watermelon with the coolness of the cistern, the taste of sea salt and sand, the smoke in the kitchen, and the day of the matances. Summers of sun and sweat, winters of cold and damp sheets. I often search in this web of past and perceive the secret law that unites nature with happiness, in that small point between the wide sea and the universe. It was my first utopia: a fleeting but foundational harmony.

Utopias light the trail and are a way of looking to the future without abandoning what we once were. We must recognize the points that bind us to the past and understand that life is change. We must not lose our capability for wonder and not be fearful of the abysses of the future. Seeking refuge and defending simplicity, dignity, and freedom today in the Castle of San Carlos, built to defend from attacks of pirates and Berbers who sailed the Mediterranean, is a symbol of strength, defense, and shelter from uncertainty. Artists, too, build fortresses with the power of words, form, and color.

But the work of an artist isn't easy. Knowing who you are and finding your purpose is linked to talent, but also to uncertainty and work. We create on the edge of the abyss, between doubt and the need to say something true. Uniting opposites. Trial and error. Intuition, through what you don't like, you arrive to what defines you. Sometimes art is anguish, other times it's revelation. It's always a search. And perhaps that is, deep down, the closest thing to utopia: the constant possibility of reinventing oneself, of creating meaning where there seemed to be none, of lighting a light in the middle of the horizon.