For me Sardinia is an organism. A conscious organism, crossed by an efficient, invisible system of communication. An entity that is both male
and female at the same time. It’s sometimes resigned like one with millions of years of experience, it’s sometimes rebellious and belligerent like an adolescent just looking out into society searching an immediate solution, a revolution. The land is the first value of this organism that must be protected. You can offend a land by exploiting it intensely, without control, with a plundering spirit, looking for a maximum personal gain, immediately, as quickly as possible. If we adhered to the idea of such progress, what would we leave for our grandchildren? All of the constituent elements of a land must be protected, the sea, the coasts, the plains, the plants, the animals and the mountains. We shoudl protect the man as an element , together with his manifestations; each group populating the world must have its own freedom and dignity and should have the right to preserve its patrimony of codes and signs, traditions and customs, if it wants to. During my journey I often recalled the life of Chico Mendes, the Brazilian siringueiro, who defended the Amazon Indians’ right to live in their own land with their own ways of life, according to their own rules, in harmony with their own natural environment. Chico, who was murdered by the large land owners and for indiscriminate profit, dreamed of a world of differences, where diverse cultural variations could have produced an infinite progress based on
confrontation between people, he dreamed of a world where no man would be deprived of his dignity and self-determination, or his pride and freedom. My work has been guided by his spirit.

Rome, 4 April 2006
Dario Coletti