From India to Bangladesh: A Journey into Poverty

Marco Valoti is not just an artist but an tireless traveler in search of truth. In his journeys through India and Bangladesh, he has explored the raw face of reality, where the concept of exploitation manifests itself in its most evident form. Where once people spoke of capital, today they speak of plundered resources, of lives consumed in the whirlwind of endless production.

Valoti does not merely observe, nor does he retreat into the comforting rhetoric of art as escapism. On the contrary, his work becomes an unyielding lens, capable of revealing without filters what many choose to ignore. His gaze does not seek the picturesque, nor the aestheticized drama, but lingers on the wrinkles of fatigue, on hands marked by relentless labor, on the eyes of those who no longer even have the strength to dream. His journey is a descent into the bowels of the world, where humanity reveals itself for what it is: exploited, oppressed, forgotten.

Greenlandic Mythologies and the Reality of the Global South

In the legends of Greenland, paradise lies at the bottom of the ocean, a place where those who have worked their entire lives can finally rest, immersed in an eternal summer. It is the dream of those who have known only ice and hardship, a promise of peace and abundance after a lifetime of sacrifice. But what happens in places where the winter of exploitation never ends? Where fatigue finds no relief, and the cycle of misery repeats endlessly, with no possibility of redemption?

India and Bangladesh, lands of ancient traditions and millennia-old cultures, are today the stage of a ruthless reality, where progress takes the form of a machine that devours everything—resources, human beings, hopes. Here, there is no paradise at the bottom of the sea, only the grayness of textile factories, the sweat of millions of workers, the deafening silence of global indifference.

The Invisible Hands of the Market

Who sews our shirts, our trousers, our underwear? Who weaves our ties, assembles our jackets, produces our shoes? Millions of men and women spend their days bent over fabrics, amid the incessant noise of sewing machines and air saturated with harmful dust. Two million female workers in Bangladesh alone live their lives among needles and threads, enduring backbreaking shifts and wages that barely allow them to survive.

Yet their toil is invisible. The clothes we wear are flawless, the glittering shop windows of Western stores reveal nothing of the sweat and tears shed to make them. Apparent beauty is built on hidden suffering, in a hall of mirrors where the consumer is always kept at a distance from the truth.

Valoti, through his journey and his art, rips apart this veil of hypocrisy. There is no room for embellishment, nor for the illusion of a better future that is not born from a collective awakening. His work is an act of denunciation, an accusation against those who, knowingly or unknowingly, continue to fuel this system.

The Ships That Die, the Men Who Remain

It is not only factories that consume lives. On the shores of Bangladesh, enormous ship carcasses await their dismantling. They are the relics of progress, hulls that once crossed the oceans and now lie abandoned, waiting to be broken apart by men who work without protection, among toxic substances and rusted metal sheets. Every day, dozens of workers risk their lives in this death industry, a silent trade that enriches a few and kills many.

These men are nothing but cogs in the system, destined to be replaced when their bodies can no longer bear the weight of labor. The cycle of the global economy has condemned them to oblivion, yet their sacrifice is an integral part of the world we live in. The ships die, but they remain, trapped in an existence without alternatives.

Always Through the Streets of Dhaka

The next day, the streets of Bangladesh’s capital tell the same story. Men and women marching toward factories, children playing among piles of garbage, the incessant hum of sewing machines marking the time for those who have no choice. It is a script that repeats every day, always the same, always unchanging.

And man? The man who becomes a wolf to his own kind, who exploits, who oppresses, who builds his fortune on the despair of others? History repeats itself, always, without ever teaching anything. Homo homini lupus, the Latins said, and never has this phrase sounded more relevant than today.

Marco Valoti travels not just to see but to bear witness, to denounce the great evil of our time. His is a cry of alarm, an invitation to look beyond appearances, to question what lies behind every garment we wear, every ship we abandon, every resource we consume.

The journey continues, and with it, the search for truth. But will revealing it be enough to make the world stop and look?

SPECIAL THANKS TO M.D.