Long hair hides a little girl's face. The small pencil is clenched between her tiny fingers as she draws a dove. This is the subject chosen by Gianluca Costantini, artist and illustrator, for the new Un Ponte Per card he donated to us.

A dreamlike subject that portrays a peaceful future restored by the hands of the new generations. 'Maybe it's just a dream, as the world is heading towards a state of semi-permanent war, with a constant narrowing of human rights,' Gianluca tells us the morning we meet him. Genocide is taking place in Palestine and it is difficult to talk about anything else. "But let's start at the beginning. In 1993, Joe Sacco's graphic novel 'Palestine, an Occupied Nation' came out and immediately became a classic. It was a work that undoubtedly influenced Costantini's artistic career, which began that very year, at the end of the Academy. "I was inspired by the power of those things there, the big collective stories like the Palestinian one. I loved Joe Sacco very much. I even organised an exhibition dedicated to him in our country'. Over the years, Gianluca chose to use his art to side with the last people and those fighting for human rights. He became what is known as an artist-activist, "a definition that suits me because, as Gramsci said, 'every manifestation of art is political' and I come from the art of collectives, from self-production for a militant public". Over time, Gianluca moves from large community narratives to personal stories, which become emblematic of larger causes. The graphic stroke becomes essential, the texts reduced to short evocative captions, and the power of the message certainly gains. His works make viral the faces of activism that resists regimes and the deprivation of rights and freedoms. He draws, among others, Giulio Regeni, Patrick Zaki, Julian Assange, becoming very popular on social media and often ending up in the eye of the storm. He will be accused of anti-Semitism by the American right for a cartoon on Netanyahu and of terrorism by the Turkish government.

'Obviously I regret not being able to travel to some countries any more,' he says, 'but I guess that's part of the game somehow. The accusations of anti-Semitism hurt the most: they are one of the worst things for human rights activists. However, I believe that in a world ruled by a committee of businessmen and warmongers, art has a duty to try to break through the hypocrisy of the powerful,' he explains. Thus, Gramsci's curls and glasses become the distinctive features of the face of Zaki, an Egyptian activist symbol of resistance to repression, who was only freed at the end of a major global campaign. "I am happy that Patrick is OK. My work ended the day he was freed and he was able to return to Italy. Unfortunately, I don't think a similar fate will befall Assange". Assange, Wikileaks and the western wars on Iraq, one of the reasons why Gianluca is siding with Un Ponte Per: "I knew your 30 years of work in Iraq, alongside its people who have paid a heavy price for the madness of war. It is incredible that those who committed these atrocities never ended up on trial, while those like Assange who revealed their crimes are imprisoned and considered a public enemy,' he adds. Turning his thoughts back to Gaza, today Gianluca is dedicating a series of portraits to Palestinian journalists killed after 7 October (at the time of the interview there were about 80, ed.). "A disaster for the truth. They were brave people, direct witnesses, brutally silenced so that they would not tell what they had seen. They will not be able to contribute to building a shared truth. A truth that will be missing in Gaza," he concludes.

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