My newest portray, The Citadel (v. Nardo), didn’t start merely on canvas. It started as a whisper – a picture handed digitally between nameless fingers, reposted, remixed, archived, and mythologized throughout the web. Like lots of my works, this piece builds from historic fragments and symbols, grounded within the perception that memes usually are not fleeting – they’re foundational. They don’t simply replicate tradition, slightly, they write it.
Final yr in 2024, I offered a solo present in Abu Dhabi centered round the truth that Subway – the sandwich chain – was one of many first quick meals eating places to simply accept Bitcoin. That small historic element grew to become the seed of a bigger conceptual inquiry: what does it imply to “eat” in an age of hyper-speed data? The works explored the overlap between quick meals, memes, and digital consideration. The exhibition was tight, exact, and deeply memetic in its construction.
The Citadel got here from an identical place.
In 2013, a now-legendary Reddit put up titled “I’m a time-traveler from the longer term, right here to beg you to cease what you might be doing” appeared on-line. The creator – claiming to be from 2025 – warned of a future formed by Bitcoin, however not in the way in which many had hoped. It wasn’t a utopia. It was a stratified society the place those that adopted early grew to become untouchably wealthy, and everybody else was left behind. Whether or not satire, fiction, or real warning, the put up struck a nerve. It unfold shortly. It grew to become a part of the cultural and memetic structure of Bitcoin.
Years later, one other nameless person gave that warning a visible kind. The Citadel v.1, doubtless created on 4chan, featured a large tower cobbled collectively from borrowed imagery – most notably a background ripped from Alexander Mikhalchyk’s oil portray Tower of Babel. Crimson – overlaid with iconic web figures like Pepe, Wojak, and the Bogdanoff twins. It was chaotic, humorous, ominous. And it caught hearth. Variations unfold throughout boards. Variants emerged for Monero, Ethereum, and different Bitcoin-based class hierarchies. A complete mythology took form round it.
I couldn’t cease eager about that picture. The symbolism. The verticality. The warning. It wasn’t only a meme – it was a map. A visible schema of energy and perception, instructed within the language of the web. And but, it had by no means been bodily painted. By no means given the burden or permanence it deserved. That’s after I determined to create what I imagine is the primary absolutely hand-painted oil model of the Bitcoin Citadel meme.
The Citadel (v. Nardo) is 7 toes broad, 5 toes tall, and completely rendered in oil by hand over six months. The tower in my portray is unique – constructed from references to Bruegel’s depictions of Babel. The superimposed depictions of Pepe, the monk, the nobleman, even Jesus, are deliberate nods to the v.1 model, reimagined and built-in with painterly care. Nothing right here is copy-pasted. Each inch is constructed to really feel mythic, monumental, and true to the burden of the meme itself.
Like all my work, it’s meant to evoke grandeur, drama, and symbolic density. It’s meant to really feel like a relic from a future previous – one thing dug up from the ruins of digital civilization. My late professor as soon as instructed me that the perfect artwork is each folkloric and provocative. That line by no means left me.
And that’s basically what web memes are. They’re trendy folklore. They encode perception, id, warning, and aspiration in compressed symbols. They might begin as jokes – however jokes have at all times been a supply system for deeper reality. Memes don’t simply survive on-line; they form what we anticipate from actuality.
The Citadel (v. Nardo) shall be bought at public sale by way of Scarce.Metropolis and debut on the Bitcoin Convention in Las Vegas – the most important gathering of Bitcoiners on the planet. It’s not only a portray. It’s a response. A reckoning. A reminder.As a result of ultimately, as I at all times say: you change into what you meme.
It is a visitor put up by X-Nardo Opinions expressed are solely their very own and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Journal.
