Tempi di Covid 6

Within the «COVID» cycle, the work transforms the continuity of ordinary labour into an image of vulnerability, in which sanitary protection, the circulation of goods, and the promise of nourishment can no longer be separated. Zampogna does not represent the pandemic through its most recognisable medical theatre, but through the persistence of a necessary gesture: carrying something intended for others while the body must defend itself against proximity. The scene thus enters the artist’s investigation of the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality”: an everyday episode, isolated from its context, acquires the impersonal clarity of a public image.

The masked figure holds a tilted tray of yellow fruit, and the precariousness of that arrangement turns transportation into a measure of social balance. The fruit’s concentrated colour gathers the idea of abundance and nourishment, yet its orderly display also makes it merchandise, a quantity to be preserved and delivered. The protected face does not erase individual presence, but reduces it to a recognisable function defined by task and protocol. Around it, the geometric and floral weave of the fabric absorbs setting and figure into an ornamental continuity. Rather than locating the action, the surface suspends it, as though lived experience had already been converted into a repeatable image.

The work introduces into the cycle a tension that is less ceremonial and more material than the images of authority or public ritual. Here the pandemic appears as a redistribution of visibility: the normally marginal gesture of someone carrying goods becomes central, while the identity of the person performing it remains secondary. Zampogna neither celebrates labour nor turns it into an edifying story. Instead, he reveals its ambivalence, because what sustains life is also what exposes the body. The fabric prevents the scene from closing itself within reportage and leaves the viewer with a present in which care, consumption, and risk share the same surface.