What happens when the system of investigations and information begins to falter, and unproven conspiracies and theories transform into a genuine leads? Throughout history, the archetype of the Devil and the phenomenon of Satanism have been used as tools to explain events that have nothing to do with facts, exploiting mankind’s ancestral and atavistic fear of the unknown. Thus, suspicion and doubt spread like wildfire, gradually turning into weapons. ‘It’s a pandemic of Satanists!’ is shouted, and slowly the realm of foreboding takes on the weight of condemnations, condemnations so cruel that we are compelled to ask: what if it were all true? Like a Rorschach stain, in Road to Black, one navigates between the reality of facts and fiction, arriving at the recreation of an ideal case, perhaps never actually existing, and thus telling the tale of the profound connection that binds man to evil.
Nothing has a single face; on the contrary, the pieces of the puzzle can mix until fragments that once seemed impossible to unite fit together perfectly. Nothing is experienced in a unique way or has a single, precise place on the map. The human mind, confusing mist and midges, manages to break apart and then reassemble the puzzle of experiences. And thus, through confabulation and false memories, we come to perceive as real a world that never existed and events that never actually happened.
The central theme of Road to Black is Satanic Panic (Satanophobia or moral panic) consisting of more than 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), which which in the 1980s and 1990s developed first in America, then in the rest of the world, and which still continues, at times, in the daily news. The research serves as an ideal mapping of worldwide cases where Satan was used as a scapegoat, an excuse, a guilty party, and an “easy” conviction, often towards individuals who were entirely innocent or merely involved in various aspects of Satanism unrelated to ritual killings.
These miscarriages of justice are so egregious that they seem like products of imagination, yet they have instead destroyed completely innocent lives and families, and this because nothing is closer to us than reality transformed, experienced, just as our eyes and our mind want it to be.
This project is part of a broader investigation culminating in the dummy Road to Black developed during the Yogurt Magazine Masterclass in the years 2022/2023. The work aims to fill an editorial gap, seeking to dismantle taboos and mental barriers that make it difficult to discuss things that scare us. Humans have always been fascinated and attracted by evil, but curiosity or the desire for knowledge should not be exploited by social beliefs, political interests, and community fears to the point of creating such a powerful and long-lasting negative effect.

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