Uncovering the Darkness, Hot Zone, 2021 © Claudia Fuggetti

The discovery of the brain area where dreams are generated is relatively recent, it is located exactly above the nape and is called the “hot zone”. Hot Zone documents the unfolding of a lucid dream, placing the viewer in the balance between fiction and reality, in which photography becomes the proof of its existence.

Bright Star, Hot Zone, 2021 © Claudia Fuggetti

I started this new work at a complicated time in my life, at the end of 2019; I was suffering from insomnia and I was very anxious about the future, the fate of human beings and the environment, seriously compromised. Dreams began to merge with reality, becoming images: from that moment my obsession was to reproduce what I saw during my sleeping hours, noting details and trying to recreate them visually.

Garden, Hot Zone, 2021 © Claudia Fuggetti

The images present on a subconscious layer are transformed into a visual journey in which visions, flashbacks and hallucinations connect, giving rise to new space-time dimensions and psychedelic worlds. The relationship between landscape and nature is complex: real places have been altered through digital painting interventions and seem to come from alien planets, taking on unusual colours and become a mirror of human tension towards the future of the Earth.

Memory Glitch, Hot Zone, 2021 © Claudia Fuggetti

Beauty hides restlessness: “I had a dream, which was not all a dream.” – Lord Byron

The landscape acts as an emotional frame rather than a contextual one. This relationship is complex because it is contradictory, as we often associate art, nature and beauty with eternity, but through the emotional landscape, we are reminded of the sense of precariousness that characterises our age.

Hot Zone becomes a real dimension, bringing back to life what is usually destined to be lost after each awakening.