Sissi Daniela Olivieri

Daniela Olivieri (b. 1977, Bologna, IT), known as Sissi, lives and works between Bologna and London. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, where she is now a tenured professor, and is a member of the Board of the Collegio Artistico Venturoli, an artists’ residency active since 1826. Her work has received major recognition, including the Premio Furla per l’Arte (2002), the Alinovi Prize awarded by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2003), and the New York Prize promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2005). In 2022 she won the public competition Una scultura per Margherita Hack for the City of Milan.

Sissi weaves scientific research together with ancestral knowledge to construct narratives about the human body and the natural world. She challenges the encyclopaedic model through an intuitive practice that stretches the limits of the physical world, revisiting it via an ever-shifting perception of flesh and matter, understood as something malleable and continuously reworked.

Her practice spans sculpture (predominantly ceramics, as well as iron and wood), textiles (combining various natural materials), performance, writing and drawing. Her works invite viewers to navigate transformation, personal growth and renewal. Over the years she has particularly celebrated the generative nature of the (female) body, conceived as a site of strength, power and creation. Freedom in her work is tied both to the courage of exposing vulnerability—often using her own body as a field of experimentation—and to a rigorous, methodical discipline that enables a continual rebirth of the self.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Trasguardi, Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m, Bologna (2022); Sacri Indici, Laboratorio degli Angeli, Bologna; Cene, ACP – Palazzo Franchetti, Venice (2020); Corpi e Processi – Storie di fili, CSAC, Parma (2020); Vestimenti, Palazzo Bentivoglio, Bologna (2020); Manifesto Anatomico, MAMbo and Musei Civici d’Arte Antica – Istituzione Bologna Musei, Bologna (2015); Voliare, Fattoria Celle, Giuliano Gori Collection, Pistoia (2007); Al di là dello sguardo la corda lega, Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo (2008); Nature, Chelsea Art Museum, New York (2006); Nidi, MACRO, Rome (2004); Aerea, MOCA, Miami (2001).

Her work has also been shown in group exhibitions such as: Panorama Edition 4, curated by Sarah Singh, supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Delhi, Gwalior Fort, Gwalior (2024); Camere con vista. Aby Warburg, Firenze e il laboratorio delle immagini, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (2023); Performative03, MAXXI L’Aquila (2023); Memory Cloth, Studio Orta Les Moulins, Boissy-le-Châtel, Paris (2023); Crazy – La follia nell’arte contemporanea, Chiostro del Bramante, Rome (2022); The Academic Body, American Academy in Rome, Rome; Porto Marghera 100, Palazzo Ducale, Venice (2017); Par tibi, Roma, nihil, Musei dei Fori Imperiali, Rome (2016); Patterns of Mind, Turku Biennial, Turku (2011); No Soul for Sale – A Festival of Independents, Tate Modern, London (2010); Collaudi, Padiglione Italia, 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2007).