Tempi di Covid 2

In COVID, everyday movement becomes an administered route, in which the body continues to advance while its identity is reduced to a trace within a regulated environment. The work removes the pandemic from emergency reportage and reconnects it to a deeper transformation of ordinary experience: walking, crossing a space and appearing in public are now actions inscribed within visual and behavioural protocols. In the COVID series, Zampogna thus returns to the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” that runs through his practice, but transfers it from advertising imagery to the concrete discipline of bodies.

The wide stride promises autonomy and continuity, yet the mask and the indeterminate face contradict that assurance, turning the individual into a presence that is both active and erased. The step does not lead towards a recognisable destination. It remains fixed in the act of crossing itself, as though freedom of movement now coincided with the obligation to follow a prescribed route. The blue bands of fabric define a pale passage, while the puckered weave cuts across body and space without distinguishing them. The support does not simply receive the figure. It converts it into an intermittent signal, subjected to the same grid that organises the environment. Even the most purposeful gait therefore appears vulnerable to a loss of clarity.

Unlike the media mythologies of the earlier series, here the code is not superimposed upon life as a recognisable message. It has already become the form within which life can appear. The pandemic acts as a condition of vision, making the most familiar gestures strange and replacing full presence with a functional silhouette, legible primarily through protection, distance and direction. The work thus leaves an unresolved tension: the body moves forward, but its advance reveals how shared space has become a device that guides, separates and renders people anonymous.