Masks, Sunglasses, and Gloves: COVID-19 Visual Semantics

The pandemic begets an entire new visuality, whose implicit function seems to be that of coping with the pernicious invisibility of the virus and its contagions. The article focuses, in particular, on the visual semiotics of the anti-COVID-19 medical face-mask. It argues that, whereas this worn device can be hardly re-functionalized at the individual level, at the collective level, on the contrary, it becomes the object of a recurrent visual re-semantization, whose patterns semiotics must investigate also in order to formulate some previsions about the cultural future of this now omnipresent device: will it remain forever in the human visual space?