“I don’t think of the pictorial side of things, I’m not interested in painting as a manual activity, as much as the correlations within which a painting can be created.”.


STIF is the name with which she signs her paintings; she is a dual national, Italian and Croatian. She lives and works in Milan, where she attended the courses on painting technique at the Superior School of Applied Art of the Sforzesco Castle. After earning her degree in information technology, and making a career as a manager and business consultant, she devoted herself to her principal passions: painting and the digital editing of images. She first worked with software and pixels, and then with brushes and pastels, and in pop art, she found the greatest inspiration for her activities. The English and American wallpapers into which STIF’s Synoptikons are inserted, offer almost infinite possibilities for drawings, colors and surfaces, from the most discreet to the gaudiest. Wallpaper is a tool for decorating space, shaping luxurious or popular environments, or environments that are cold and minimalist, or which share in the emotions of the spirit. Scratching the wallpaper of many homes, below the surface you can find old layers of wallpaper that have been there for who knows how long… Her synoptikons are like the layers of wallpaper: new identities glued onto older ones.

Key words: Synopticon, society liquid-modern, heroes, celebrities.

Excerpted from chapter 2 “From martyr to hero, from hero to celebrity” from “Liquid Life” – Zygmunt Bauman.


Today, it is not the few who watch the many, but the many who watch the few (Synopticon). The many gladly look, and search for, in models placed under the spotlight, “a credible collective spokesman.” In our society of liquid-modern consumption there is no longer room for martyrs and heroes. With the advance of consumerism, martyrs and heroes beat a retreat. Celebrities take the place of heroes. Unlike martyrs and heroes, whose fame is the result of their actions, the reasons celebrities have been brought into the limelight are not the principal causes of their fame. The decisive factor is visibility, the ubiquity of their image, and the frequency with which their names are mentioned on television shows, magazines, and the subsequent private discussions. Celebrities are on everybody’s lips: they are the person who is never missing in any family. They feel at home in the liquid-modern society because they are a sort of link which gathers imaginary communities around them. Unlike the fame of heroes, the fame of celebrities is episodic: each of them jumps out of nothing, and then falls back into nothing shortly thereafter. However widespread the cult of a celebrity may be, or however noisy his or her fans may be, the group of followers can dissolve and disappear at any time, leaving everyone free to join the cult of a new celebrity to their liking. However competitive celebrities may be, they are not really rivals, there is no monopoly of celebrities. The cult with respect to one does not exclude, and certainly does not prohibit, people from joining the following of another. Any combination is allowed, and even encouraged: each of these, and above all, their overall excess, contributes to the appeal of the cult in and of itself.