My last painting, The Citadel (see Nardo)It hasn’t started simply on canvas. It started as a whisper: an image has digitally passed through anonymous hands, republished, remixed, archived and mythologized on the internet. Like many of my works, this piece is based on historical fragments and symbols, rooted in the belief that the memes are not fleeting: they are fundamental. They don’t just reflect culture, rather, write it.
Last year, in 2024, I presented a personal exhibition at Abu Dhabi focused on the fact that Subway – the Sandwich chain – was one of the first fast food to accept Bitcoin. That small historical detail has become the seed of a wider conceptual investigation: what does it mean to “consume” in an era of hyper-member information? The works explored the overlap between fast food, memes and digital attention. The exhibition was close, precise and deeply meta in its structure.
The citadel it came from a similar place.
In 2013, a now legal Reddit post entitled “They are a journey through time from the future, here to ask you to stop what you are doing” It appeared online. The author – claiming to be from 2025 – warned of a future modeled by Bitcoin, but not in the way many had hoped. It wasn’t a utopia. It was a stratified society in which those who adopted soon became intocally rich and all the others remained back. Whether it’s satire, fiction or authentic warning, the post hit a nerve. Spread rapidly. It has become part of Bitcoin’s cultural and memetic architecture.
Years later, another anonymous user gave a visual form to that warning. The Citadel v.1Probably created on 4chan, it presented a huge tower coupled together by images borrowed – in particular a background torn from Alexander oil painting Mikhalchyk Tower of Babel. Red – He overlapped with iconic Internet characters such as Pepe, Wojak and Bognoff’s twins. It was chaotic, fun, threatening. And caught fire. The versions spread in the forums. Variants emerged for Monero, Ethereum and other class -based class hierarchies. An entire mythology took shape around it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that image. The symbolism. The verticality. The warning. It was not just a meme: it was a map. A visual scheme of power and belief, told in the language of the Internet. Still, he had never been physically painted. He never gave the weight or permanence he deserved. It was then that I decided to create what I think is the first hand -painted oil version of the Cittadella Bitcoin meme.
The Citadel (see Nardo) It is 7 feet wide, 5 feet tall and entirely made in hand oil for six months. The tower in my painting is original – built with references to the representations of Bruegel di Babel. The overlapping depictions of pepper, the monk, the noble, even of Jesus, make a deliberate deliberate to the v.1 Version, reinvented and integrated with pictorial care. Nothing here is swept away. Each centimeter is built to feel mythical, monumental and faithful to the weight of the meme itself.
Like all my work, it aims to evoke grandeur, dramas and symbolic density. It aims to seem a relic of a future past – something excavated by the ruins of digital civilization. My deceased professor once told me that the best art is both Folkloric and provocative. That line never left me.
And this is essentially what the Internet memes are. They are modern folklore. They codify beliefs, identities, warning and aspiration in compressed symbols. They can start as jokes, but the jokes have always been a delivery system for a deeper truth. Memes do not survive only online; They shape what we expect from reality.
The Citadel (see Nardo) It will be sold at auction via Scarsa.city and debut at the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas, the largest Bitcoiner gathering in the world. It’s not just a painting. It’s an answer. A Rackoning. A reminder, because in the end, as I always say: Become what you meme.
This is a post for guests of the X-Nardo opinions expressed are entirely proper and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or of Bitcoin magazine.