Premio Combat Prize

Biography:
Born is 1984, Sisetta Zappone is a professional printmaker whose work combines etching, lithography, and woodcut printing techniques. In 2007, Sisetta graduated in painting and drawing with highest honours from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. Sisetta then continued her studies at Bisonte International School of Graphic Arts, where she solidified her passion for etching and engraving, earning her MA as a master printmaker. Sisetta subsequently served as an etching teacher’s assistant at Bisonte while learning stone lithography with Master Franco Pistelli. Sisetta also worked as a studio assistant and life model for the American painter Paul Beel (BP Portrait Award winner) during this period. In 2009, Zappone had her first solo exhibition at “La Specola,” Florence’s Natural History Museum. She also participated in many juried shows and group exhibitions and her prints can be found in many Italian and foreign collections. In 2011, Sisetta moved to London and worked as an intern in several schools and printmaking studios. She is currently a workshop teacher at the Thames Barrier Print Studio, a shared atelier that hosts many international artists. This studio is located in South London. Defined as a “Jungian neo-surrealist”, the work of the artist has been described as a unique style characterized by a solid arcane background. Sisetta’s prints are detailed, obsessive and technically achieved. Subjects disclose a dense imagery of both the painful and the humorous, animals which seem ferocious are often revealed to be ultimately pathetic or impotent, a darkly funny view of our inner lives. Sisetta’s work is a study in symbolism and archetypes in both cultural and mystical application. From a meticulous observation of reality, she expresses her personal fascinations through a dictionary of shapes that definitely find their origins in the first millennium. Finding inspiration from a world ruled by different models and philosophies, she re-invents stories and legends very far away from us in terms of time and space, seeing mythology as a universal language by which to decode human culture and being. Through her archaic imagery and their attached mythos she provokes modern viewers by offering both the old and a new interpretation of our collective and individual experience. Este arte no debe ocultarse bajo palabras oscuras,pero tampoco debe ilustrarse tan claramente que a todos resulte comprensible ...los necios, no entenderan nada de el. Jabir ibn-Hayyan, (ca. 760-815)
Statement:
Sisetta topic reflects a peculiar approach to Art matter, based on Interpretation and Communication ,on the connections Animals’ Iconography has with our innermost part, our subconscious and anthropological heritage. It is about the inexplicable and multiple suggestions animal are still able to provoke.
She choses the beasts since due to their amazingly varied characteristics always stimulate her creativity.
Sisetta main expressive media is etching, through this technique she investigates how the metal used can turn in feathers, jaws and scales alongside the process...
Representation of bestial forms belongs to a poetic where microcosmos is macrocosmos’ mirror, where nature nurtures our mind and thoughts, teaching us how to observe and how to wonder, through its metamorphosis.
Sisetta aim and provocation is to engage viewers towards a new reality’s interpretation, to realize we are ephemeral but eternal in our journey on this earth.
I want to awake that awareness our ancestor practiced and felt too; we are just a part of a big composition whom conclusion is unknown.
Therefore, animals are just a pretext to put ourselves in contact with atavistic, hermetical energies, they conduce us both to a mysterious, inner level of our consciousness akin to a supernatural dimension.
So, just look, enjoy, analyse, wonder, reflect...