The ideology of the absurd, so dear to Lewis Carroll, is here subverted and reinterpreted to reveal the deep tensions that run through our time.
The work plays on the contradictions between the original characters from Wonderland (the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and Humpty Dumpty) and their representations in this contemporary scene. These characters, laden with multiple meanings, are reinvested in a modern context where the search for meaning seems to have been replaced by mechanisms of control and self-medication.

The White Rabbit, a figure of urgency and order in the original tale, is here stripped of his rational and symbolic role as a guide. In Alice in Wonderland, the White Rabbit embodies punctuality and the absurd passage of time. Yet in this work, he trades his watch for a glass of beer, losing himself in futile and self-destructive consumption. This profound transformation of the Rabbit’s role raises a fundamental question: what is the purpose of time in a society obsessed with constant forward motion, where the frenzied pace of daily life gives way to escapism through artificial means? The abandoned watch, once a guarantee of order, becomes a symbol of relinquished control, an abandonment that, instead of liberating, resolves into a spiral of dependence.

The Mad Hatter, a key figure in Carroll’s imagination, represents unbridled thought and the absurdity of logic in an incoherent world. However, here he is reduced to a frozen figure, a lifeless statue, devoid of thought or transformation. This bust, stripped of motion and reflection, conveys the paralysis of the mind in a society where discourse on collective issues is stifled, and critical thinking is imprisoned by ideological constraints. In an era where conformity asserts itself insidiously, the Hatter is no longer the master of deviant logic but a specter, frozen in the marble of indifference.

As for Humpty Dumpty, traditionally the embodiment of fragility and rupture in Carroll’s universe, his fall and breakage symbolize here not only physical loss but also a social and psychological breakdown. In the original work, he shatters upon falling, a metaphor for the collapse of the system he represents.
Here, the broken egg is merely one part of a collection of fragments scattered across the work, an allusion to the decomposition of the social body and of human thought, succumbing to the policies inflicted upon them.

The central element of the piece lies in the medication: those multicolored capsules chaotically invading the space. They are the instruments of a society that, faced with existential anxiety, chooses superficial and artificial solutions. Where human contact and collective solidarity might offer comfort, it is pills and substances that seem to replace social exchange. The “artificial paradise” they represent, far from liberating the individual, maintains them in a state of dependency and disconnection from both the real world and from others.

This becomes a metaphor for escape. No longer curative solutions, these substances are easy escapes, desperate attempts to withdraw from an increasingly absurd and inhuman reality. This theme echoes the over-medicalization of contemporary societies, where individuals, often isolated in their personal suffering, are subjected to standardized solutions that seek to mask discomfort rather than understand its deeper roots.

Medications thus become substitutes for social bonds, objects that do not offer a solution but, on the contrary, reinforce individualism and solitude. In this sense, Down the Rabbit Hole sheds light on the illusion of comfort offered by modern artifices when faced with true existential challenges: the loss of meaning, the difficulty of communication, and the endless search for escape.

The work invites the viewer to project themselves into this fractured world, to question their own relationship to society, consumption, and suffering. It urges introspection, a confrontation with the realities they prefer to ignore, be it the medicalization of daily life or the collective indifference toward social emergencies. The viewer is not a mere observer, but an active participant in this reflection, invited to recognize themselves in these fragmented elements, to question how they live their social relationships, their desires, and their fears.

Down the Rabbit Hole is not merely a critique of consumer society, it is a spotlight on escapism as a defense mechanism in an increasingly alienating world. Through the deconstruction of traditional characters and the depiction of a retreat into artificial paradises, the work proposes a profound reflection on the human condition and its contradictions, while urging each person to reclaim their power of personal and social transformation.

The ultimate aim of the piece is to awaken the viewer’s consciousness, to free them from the chains of conformity and encourage them to embark on their own inner journey, as unsettling and inevitable as Alice’s in her Wonderland.