Critical text
The promise of good fortune invades identity here, turning the person into a provisional component of the impersonal grammar of the game. In the «Scratch & Win» series, Zampogna does not treat the ticket as a simple emblem of popular consumption, but enlarges its code until it coincides with the space assigned to the figure. The proverb and the prize thus belong to the same device: both promise a predetermined solution, a piece of common wisdom or sudden wealth, to which the subject can only conform.
The frontal monochrome figure is traversed by a graphic field populated with animals, which incorporates her into the ticket’s visual system without entirely erasing her singularity. The contrast between her restrained presence and the serial liveliness of the silhouettes turns the portrait into a surface contested by the individual and the promotional message. The inscriptions work in the same direction: «CACCIA AL PROVERBIO» turns shared knowledge into a prize competition, while «Attenzione! Non grattare qui» joins the invitation to play with a prohibition. Verification is continually announced and simultaneously deferred, since hope can survive only for as long as the result remains concealed.
The work takes the contamination of «real reality» and «media reality» that runs through Zampogna’s practice to a further threshold. Here the two registers are no longer merely superimposed: commercial language directly administers the person’s legibility, reducing her to addressee, contestant and potential prize. The irony of the animals and the proverb does not soften what is tragic in the image. Instead, it reveals a contemporary condition in which personal desire is shaped by standardised instructions and the expectation of a mediocre catharsis replaces every possibility of effective transformation.
