Animali portafortuna

The promise of good fortune transforms the person into one sign among others, making lived experience an available combination within the impersonal grammar of the game. In the «Scratch & Win» series, Zampogna does not simply represent the desire for wealth. He reveals the visual device that makes it plausible: an elementary repertoire of prizes, instructions, and auspicious symbols capable of absorbing everyday experience. The girl does not illustrate a recognisable individual story. Inserted into the design of a ticket, she is subjected to the same logic as the lucky animals, as though identity and chance belonged to a single system of equivalences.

The frontal, monochrome figure overlaps the large cat and interrupts the full autonomy of both: the body remains human and present, yet its placement brings it close to the reassuring function of a mascot. The contrast with the sharply coloured bird does not restore depth to the scene. Instead, it emphasises the discontinuity between registers compelled to coexist on the same surface. Promotional title, price, code, and the instruction «NON GRATTARE QUI» impose the impersonal syntax of a product upon painting. Screen printing gives these elements the hardness of information already printed, while acrylic preserves a visible materiality that cannot release the figure from the commercial code. The prohibition against scratching also produces a precise irony: it promises a revelation while forbidding the gesture that would disclose it.

The work thus completes a central passage in Zampogna’s investigation of the contamination between «real reality» and «media reality». The lottery is not a background applied to the person, but a mental environment that assigns value, legibility, and hope. The mediocre catharsis of a possible prize replaces any concrete transformation with the expectation of a favourable combination. What remains is not a celebration of luck, but a state of suspension: the individual becomes visible precisely as her singularity is converted into a promotional image that is at once ironic and tragic.