Tempi di Covid 9

Within the COVID cycle, the work tests ecclesiastical authority against a health protocol that preserves its public signs while exposing its bodily vulnerability. Zampogna thus brings into his investigation of the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” a figure whose identity depends on an already codified visual apparatus. The cardinal is not treated as a psychological portrait, but as a public image subjected to the shared condition of the pandemic. His rank remains recognisable, yet it can no longer separate his body from the precarity affecting every presence.

The face mask removes a decisive part of the physiognomy and turns the face into a site of interdiction, while the skullcap, pectoral cross and red sash keep the office legible without restoring its authority intact. The coexistence of these codes produces disorientation: the medical device does not erase ceremony, but forces it to share its field with the anonymous sign of collective discipline. The green fabric also acts critically, absorbing space and figure into an almost depthless continuity. The oval area containing the seated body then appears simultaneously as a provisional platform and a perimeter of distance, as though public presence could occur only within a regulated zone.

Compared with Zampogna’s earlier media mythologies, the interference here comes not from advertising or a promise of consumption, but from a sign that entered daily communication with immediate force. The pandemic becomes a condition of visibility: it alters how power appears even before altering its attributes. The work therefore leaves a precise tension unresolved. The symbols of authority endure, but their persistence reveals how completely every public role depends on a body that remains exposed, restricted and replaceable.