“The Tyranny of Old Ideas” A visual confrontation with inherited beliefs, obsolete symbols, and the violence of thoughts we keep carrying.

The Tyranny of Old Ideas stages an aesthetic and psychological short circuit suspended in an all-consuming red: the colour of the mental and social dogmas that bind us.

Within this saturated space, the naked body is held captive. Red electrical cables coil around it like the taut threads of inherited ideologies, while a lampshade replaces the face, erasing identity and obscuring vision.

The figure kneels, seemingly submissive to a false illumination she believes she commands. Seen from the side, her body reveals a fierce resistance: flesh that refuses to surrender to captivity.

The breaking point erupts with dramatic force. Submission becomes cathartic rebellion as the light bulb shatters in the protagonist’s hands, releasing a shower of sharp, glittering shards. In their flight, they scatter fragments of ideas waiting to be gathered, retold, and reimagined. Beneath the lampshade, a piercing scream gives voice to the pain of breaking free from the past.

To embrace the new, we must accept the possibility of being wounded.

The final close-up completes the iconoclastic act: a hammer strikes the light source, reducing its glass to debris. Yet the filament within continues to burn, defiant and incandescent.

This is the triumph of awareness. The old structures collapse, but the individual’s vital energy endures, finally shining with a light of its own, unfiltered. Lombardi creates a powerful and necessary visual manifesto, an invitation to strike fearlessly at the certainties that comfort us even as they hold us captive.

Text by Alessio Paolo Musella