Tempi di Covid 11

Within the «COVID» series, the work turns protection from contagion into a paradoxical form of exposure, in which shelter primarily makes visible the distance between the body and the world. Zampogna treats the pandemic not as a repertoire of episodes to illustrate, but as a condition that alters the meaning of ordinary gestures and public signs. The religious sister, a figure associated with proximity, care, and communal life, is subjected to the regime of separation imposed by the emergency. Her social identity remains legible, yet it can no longer guarantee a relationship: the protective device governs her presence.

The white umbrella extends the face mask into a second threshold, wider than the body, and turns an everyday object into an almost atmospheric barrier. The shelter protects not only from what falls from above, but also interrupts shared space laterally, isolating the figure precisely as it emphasizes her vulnerability. Before her, the empty chair, rendered almost transparent against the floral fabric, preserves the form of an encounter that cannot take place. The mixed media allows figure and furniture to emerge without fully separating from the support: the vegetal pattern absorbs them into a domestic, ornamental surface, muting the drama without erasing it. As in «Butchers», decoration does not pacify what it receives, but reveals how easily a crisis can become a consumable image.

The work thus brings the recurring contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” into the experience of distance. Spectacular emblems of the pandemic are unnecessary here: a shielded body and a place left available are enough for everyday life to appear reorganized by absence. The work adds to the series a quiet measure of collective vulnerability, assigning to the chair the weight of a suspended community. What remains is not a chronicle of the emergency, but the perception of a space prepared for relationship and now unable to fulfil it.