Tempi di Covid 13

Within the COVID cycle, sanitary protection preserves the body precisely as it erases identity, turning the human figure into a public sign of the emergency. Zampogna thus places a paradox of visibility at the centre of the pandemic: those who operate in spaces exposed to contagion become recognisable through the devices that make them unrecognisable. The person is not restored as an individual, but as an image produced by a collective condition in which safety, isolation and anonymity coincide. The investigation into the contamination of “real reality” and “media reality” finds a concrete form here: sanitary protocol does not accompany the subject, but assumes its visual identity.

The white suit and covered face compress the body into an almost uniform silhouette, allowing only the dark opening around the eyes and the artificial blue of the gloves to emerge. These chromatic departures do not restore individuality, but heighten the distance between physical presence and public function. At the same time, the ornamental pattern of the fabric passes through the figure and weakens its boundaries: the protected body seems to surface from the textile while also being reabsorbed by it. The support therefore acts as a second membrane, domestic and decorative, turning the image of emergency into something familiar, repeatable and already prepared for normalisation.

The work introduces into the cycle a reflection on the loss of the face as the price of safety and as a form of collective representation. It stages neither a heroic gesture nor an identifiable news event, but the anonymous condition of someone defined by the apparatus that protects them. In contrast to Zampogna’s earlier media mythologies, the public image here promises neither consumption, luck nor prestige: it organises survival. Yet the same ambivalence remains, since what defends life converts the person into a functional icon, while ornament absorbs trauma into the continuity of daily experience.