Margherita Paoletti is an Italian artist and illustrator whose work is guided by the idea that the body is “an organic container holding life, dreams, desires, memories, and experiences.” A graduate of the European Institute of Design in Rome, Paoletti also studied at Central Saint Martins in London and BTK in Berlin.

Paoletti’s illustrations for Zócalo take our overarching theme for Sketchbook—impressions of the natural world—and place these impressions within the shape of our bodies. It is an apt expression of the COVID moment, in which many of us are forced to search for the respite of nature in our memory, and the only safely unmasked face is found in the mirror.