Artistic creation is both a mirror and a forge of social representations, particularly of the future, which it constructs through its affective, critical, and symbolic capacities. This study identifies two critical moments in which art has shaped or anticipated future imaginaries: the early twentieth-century avant-gardes and the current conjuncture, shaped by technology, sustainability, and globalization. These shifts reveal how art internalizes the contradictions of modernity—from utopian progress to dystopian collapse—and channels them into culturally resonant visions of what lies ahead. The author situates contemporary artistic production within a matrix of crisis and transformation, where environmental catastrophe, cultural hybridization, and technological immersion have reshaped the aesthetic vocabulary of futurity. Drawing on Moscovici’s theory of social representations, the analysis explores how these artworks serve as collective meaning-making devices, encoding fears, desires, and symbolic anticipations. Notably, art does not simply illustrate the future but helps construct its symbolic grammar, offering interpretive frameworks that society uses to navigate uncertainty. From Brueghel’s apocalyptic paintings to science fiction cinema, art reveals its enduring role as a cultural seismograph, registering both deep temporal anxieties and flashes of possibility.
Figueroa Díaz, M.E. (2012) ‘Representaciones sociales del futuro en el arte’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 2(2), pp. 103–116.
