Le chiacchiere non fanno.. farfugliare

In «15 Portrait 15 Poets», Zampogna turns the portrait of Lamberto Pignotti into a conflict between authorial identity and common language, where words lose authority precisely as they begin to produce meaning again. The poet’s recognisability does not guarantee an intact language: it is subjected to a proverbial formula that should transmit shared knowledge, but whose alteration makes it hesitant and unproductive. Portraiture thus abandons any celebratory function and becomes the site where personal memory, verbal automatism and media code contradict one another without cancelling one another out.

The incongruous conclusion «farfugliare», meaning “to mumble”, diverts the expectation implicit in the proverb and turns a phrase worn down by use into a stumbling block that demands to be read again. The verb does not complete common knowledge, but moves it towards speech caught between expression and noise. Beneath the phrase, the verdict «Non hai vinto», meaning “You did not win”, transfers this crisis into the impersonal grammar of the scratchcard: the poet’s word and the promise of a prize are measured by the same device, which assigns value through a blunt, anonymous outcome. Green intrusions cross the screen printed face and interrupt its continuity, making paint not a supplement to the portrait but a pressure that prevents identity from settling into a completed image.

Compared with the earlier works devoted to luck and illusory wealth, this work shifts the mechanism of play onto the ground of language and personal relationships. Economic aspiration is no longer the only thing devalued: the formulas through which a community organises experience also resemble preprinted combinations awaiting a verdict. Pignotti remains recognisable, but his presence survives within codes that expose and disturb it at once. Zampogna thus leaves a precise tension unresolved: identity coincides with neither face nor word, but takes shape through the friction between them and the impersonal systems that place both in circulation.