COSI’ O COSI’

The photo shows a Western woman and man with their faces covered. The woman wears a surgical mask as prophylaxis against epidemics and endemic diseases. The young man, on the other hand, wears a black burka, thus reversing cultural dimensions in terms of both gender and religious and bio-political dimensions. This reversal highlights how clothing is always a cultural fact: face covering is motivated in the West by security issues and phobic forms of hygienism, while in certain Asian areas it is motivated by forms of patriarchal power and radicalized misogyny. In both cases political, medical or religious power imposes obligations and prescribes sanctions: everything is at the same time relative, introjected and normalized.