Art Portfolio Two - Futuristic Fantasy, Initial Idea

From my deepest and darkest imagination, forecasting out loud worst case scenario:

Soon after the covid-19 global lock down people came out celebrating going back to normal life. People carelessly went back to work and sent their children back to schools like the pandemic never happened. People have immediately forgotten that the virus have killed the most vulnerable in our society and we all thought that by having distance between us and this predator it will simply just go away. Unfortunately the disease never went and still surviving among us because the strongest of us still carry it with them. We ignorantly think that the weak will die and therefor the virus must die with them. But like any predator the virus is merely silenced, hiding in the shadows developing, mutating, getting stronger and waiting to strike the strongest of us. People are socially distancing from each other but without a cure the virus have now developed in million different ways in billions of different hosts. People came back socializing drunk mingling together and sharing their best inner microscopic lab experiment results. After a while everything seems good and people loosened up the social distancing measures because we felt like we have won and life looks bright again. Covid-19 have become history now and humanity endures.

And then October 2020 came along bringing back an old friend namely the flue. Covid-19 was longing to say hi to this anticipated guest and then pray on it. The Corona virus quickly digested the flue it, broke down it's DNA and consumed it's resurrection powers. After that Covid-19 further mutated and became stronger, more adaptable, ten times contagious and very hard to fight. The new Covid-20 was the deadliest disease mankind ever known. A second outbreak rapidly happened and the infection rate exponentially increased, killing everyone exposed to it. In few months two thirds of humanity was wiped out by Covid-20 along with 90% of wildlife. The world was shocked and it could not cope with the scale of this cataclysm. Many people have died and most of them were not even buried. You could see billions of bodies humans and animals out on the streets. And people did not move them because they were worried about getting infected, mostly because they were too busy surviving. Shortly after that a group of scientists developed a vaccine and a few brave leaders managed to distribute them to the remaining survivors.
Life after that became more challenging for many obvious reasons. People had to prioritize and make hard decisions based on moment to moment need. And because most people are gone the rest of us had to take on more responsibilities, that is why both the rich and the poor had to go to work to support each other until everyone became severely anxious under great amount of stress all the time. Depression and daily mental breakdowns became the new norm because life expectancy has now shortened and the majority gave up on everything they once believed in and mass suicides were met with indifference. Technology and communication devolved few steps backwards because of their missing inventors and operators. Borders have changed and the number of countries has tripled because resources are now limited and unevenly distributed. So people with big resources armed themselves for protection against other rival groups. Agriculture has been completely destroyed and the soil were ruined due to technological throwback and because of climate breakdown, and therefore most powerful groups legitimized extinguishing their rivals and steal their stock.
Not long after, World War 3 started due to endless conflicts and long disputes over resources. Previous world government had naturally for a long time before the pandemic produced an enormous stock of weaponry with thermonuclear capacity. Nuclear war broke out and most of the civilized world was destroyed during this conflict that lasted for ten years. Along with the climate breakdown and the fallout there were many reasons that made it much more difficult for humanity to survive. The ice caps have completely melted causing sea levels to rise and drown all coastal cities. Most of the marine life was killed due to a rapid change in temperature and undersea volcanic eruptions. All the forests and their wildlife have burnt and turned into either desert or radioactive wastelands. And only few thousands of humanity survived. They stuck together and stayed strong and because they held onto hope of a better world. They managed to build secure colonies around the world and for the most part they where living underground.

For my project I would like to depict that dark dystopian future in a five-piece art gallery. Four paintings that revolve around the struggle of that time, and how daily life feels like from an imaginary future point of view. Also I will draw on canvas scenes of destroyed cities on land and underwater. As well as one 3D sculpture/model of one of the surviving colonies.

I have looked at Alex Andreev's digitally made dystopian painting for inspiration.

I am naturally drawn to dystopian art, because they tend to take me away from reality to a different dimension. I was immediately blown away with this painting. It encapsulates civilisation on a giant ship struggling to navigating on land.

This painting was made by the same Russian digital artist Alex Andreev. Simple Black and white yet very expressive, I quiet like it. It shows the end of civil life and the dominance of machines.

References:

JOBSON, C. (2012). A Separate Reality: New Paintings of Dystopian Worlds by Alex Andreev. [online] Colossal. Available at: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/10/a-separate-reality-new-paintings-of-dystopian-worlds-by-alex-andreev/ [Accessed 6 Jul.2020].

reddit. (n.d.). r/gaming - Awesome art I found and recognized. [online] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ipvee/awesome_art_i_found_and_recognized/ [Accessed 12 Jul. 2020].