Index
Mei
The index of the symbols in my art and their meanings.
intro
In old Roman parchments, an index was not just a tally of pages, it was a promise that every heading within could be found, opened, and lived.
I borrow that lineage for a portrait that is less a face than a catalogue of signs.
An inventory of symbols arranged so anyone, now or after I am dust, can trace the path I walked, feel the waves I felt, and touch the things I left glowing in the dark.
This Arwrok is now my pfp on all my social and web3 apps; but not only that.
The reason why I made this artwork for is to make sure I leave a blockchain trace of my intentions and symbols. I wrote many articles about my art, including this one, but all of them share one major problem: they're not on the blockchain.
When I'm dust, in hundreds of years, the servers of this website might be shut down, but the blockchain might still be there. My Artworks will live on the blockchain and now, thanks to this specific one, they'll forever by accompanied with an Index.
This artwork was minted in the "Memento Vivere" contract and transferred to my vault.
In this article i'll go trough each one of the symbols in my artworks.
"Index Mei" has all of them, but i'll also reference to other works of mine to show how they apply in different compositions.
Index of symbols
The Shape We Inherit
The Character
The figure is not a portrait of a person, but of a condition. It has no name, no gender, no faith. It stands for me, for you, for anyone who’s ever paused to wonder what they are made of.
As impossible as it is to draw the universal human, this is my attempt: a body stripped to form and symbol, carrying marks instead of labels. It is an archetype, not of perfection but of presence.
Golden Cage (the cross around the head)
The unalterable geometry of being human.
Like the construction lines of a preparatory sketch, its bars mark the start and finish points baked into our linear design: we breathe, we see, we end. Those same lines give form and proportion.
They hold the code of our nature; forged in a god’s image, yet stubbornly, disappointingly human.
Chains, Scars and Wounds
The weights life fastens from the outside.
Each link is a moment: a loss, a promise, a fracture, a fire. Some corrode and vanish, some must be broken, some we polish and keep. But all alter the way the body carries itself.
They press into the skin, leaving behind scars, some healed, some raw, and a topography of memory written in flesh.
The Pigments We Wear
Green Skin
The stillness before motion. Green is inertia, laziness, the default setting of a body at rest.
It’s not imposed; it’s chosen. Unlike the cage or the chain, this limit can be changed.
The green skin holds the potential for yellow, for orange, for blue.
But until movement happens, it waits
Red Head
The ignition point. Red is passion, urgency, hunger. It doesn’t accept stillness; it calls for motion.
If the green skin is the body’s pause, the red head is the mind’s refusal to stay paused.
It is ambition before arrival.
My red is my will to change, my belief that transformation begins in thought.
The Stage
Architecture
Not all architecture is built from stone.
Some is shaped in silence, carved from terrain, or assembled in pixels.
My background is architecture in the classical sense: space as rhythm, proportion, and presence.
But in my work, that idea stretches wider. The landscapes behind my figures, whether arches or hills, ruins or skies, are all designed spaces.
They are architecture too. What matters is that they’re shaped, not found; deliberate, not random.
They hold the same charge: to influence mood, motion, meaning. I don’t just place a character in a scene, I construct the scene like a floorplan for emotion. Because space changes us. It always has.
Architecture shaped me before I shaped anything. I was raised in a floorplan; now I draw my own.
God rays and volumetric lights
Not a symbol to be decoded, but a presence to be felt. They are the guardian light, falling between bars, showing the path without forcing it. Sometimes grace is just direction made visible.
Color Balance
The balance that keeps us whole. The warm light is the tangible, the now, the body.
The cool light is the unknown, the elsewhere, the mind. Together they represent material and spiritual, reality and imagination, logic and instinct. Left and right brain held in dialogue. To be fully alive, they must shine together.
Something Fun
Snail
This is the fun. The soft contradiction in the midst of everything else. The snail began as a joke among friends (in the comments of this tweet), but I chose to keep it close.
It reminds me not to take myself too seriously.
It carries its home like I carry mine, quietly, always. It moves slowly, but it does not stop.
And in its spiral shell, there’s something architectural, something wondrous, something deep. The snail is the symbol of the Dr. Jekyll that lives behind my Mr. Hyde.
In Conclusion
These symbols are the Index Mei; a snapshot of what I carry today. More will arrive, some will fade, others will stay. This is only the beginning of a language I’m still learning to speak.
Timelapse WIP video
youtube
if you’re curios about what it took to create this artwork, here’s a wip video that will show you, almost, step by step the process.
