UTOPÍA

Utopia – the title of a novel by Sir Thomas More written in 1516 – was coined to name a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean that possessed a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system. Since then the term has been widely used to describe intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and is also used critically, in reference to an unrealistic ideal that is impossible to achieve. In my knowledge and understanding of both Siqueiros and Mexican revolutionary history of his time, the ambition was to build an ideal society for the proletariat through ideological propaganda, and to educate the masses in order to overcome the bourgeois. Looking through the (blurred) lens of depicted history, this attempt could quite possibly be considered a formulation of Utopia.

And what is in fact conveyed by the proposed sign and its placement is purposely obscured furthermore, by the reversal of the letter ‘P’ in UTOPIA. As the only letter in the word that has a specific direction and is not identical on both sides of the middle axis, a paradox and unfamiliarity is imposed to this universally proverbial concept, by this small but significant gesture. And so another layer is added to the sign, as not only the meaning of the word, but also the word itself becomes illusive, forcing the beholder to read meaning into the sign, in order to read meaning back out of it.