Sissi Farassat

Sissi Farassat approaches photography as both image and object. Working with found and self‑made photographs, she transforms prints through meticulous, hands‑on methods, from intricate embroidery and beadwork to, in her most recent work, overmats cut into unexpected forms. Drawing from the visual language of vernacular photography, her work emphasizes the tension between what a photograph reveals and what it withholds, touching on themes of memory, desire, and the shifting role of women in visual culture.

Farassat's early portraits and self‑portraits are densely encrusted with beads and sequins, each stitch reframing the subject through the gradual accumulation of surface. In her recent Revelation series, much of the image is concealed behind these overmats so that only select fragments remain visible, a method art historian Michel Poivert has described as anti‑collage. This distillation reduces the photograph to its most charged elements, allowing the mystery to become the image itself.

Farassat’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her photographs are held in numerous public and private collections, among them the MAK, Vienna; Fotomuseum Winterthur; and LACMA.