Student essay written in en (native language: French, CEFR level: B2, field of study: Arts)

I decided to write about an artwork that I've been working on for the last days, for my art class. It is called Distopia and it was made by the mexican photographer Alex Dupont. It's a serie of pictures made in 2020, during the COVID crisis. Alex Dupont wanted to show a possible close future, based on our need to make technology better. To do that, he take pictures that show a humanity mixed with machines, a biodiversity that is almost totally gone, a new way to feed ourselves with alimentary piles. He want to interrogate the public : where is our need to always improve technology leading us ? He isn't saying that he knows, he just wants to make people think about the possibilities. Alex Dupont decided to make pictures that show an horrific future but also coloreful. It is his way to say that maybe all of the new inventions aren't going to be bad, and also that this future is terrifying but also captivating. His distopia is fulled with pink, light blue, metallic colors associations, rainbow colors.
I had a good time working on this artwork that made me discover an artist that is really interesting. I appreciated the way that he wanted to keep his ideas balanced, mixing a dystopic world with bright colors. Also in the interviews that I read, he keeps on saying that he isn't against technology and improvment and that it isn't always bad. I think that he sucessfully transposed his reflexions into photographies : looking at the pictures and the short film he made of this serie makes us feel anxious, nervous, scared about this future but we also find it beautiful, captivating. It is everything that I like about contemporary art : something nice to look at but that makes people think about important things of our time, inviting us to re think our relation with technology, na
ture, food, and also the posthumanism reflexions, do we want to "improve" human bodies with technology, until what point ? At which point do we lose our humanity ? Or do we keep it even when we are half machines ?