Rafaela de Ascanio (b. 1986, London) lives and works in London where she studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s, Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Painting at the Turps Banana Painting School. Recent exhibitions include two-person shows at Aindrea Contemporary, London (with Alexander James) in 2019 and at LAMB Gallery, London (with Mattea Perrotta) in 2018. She has also performed at Tate Modern and the Peckham Festival. Her paintings and ceramics playfully reimagine art historical tropes, symbolism from Renaissance tarot cards, landscapes from mythological painting, and compositions from Egyptian friezes. Appropriating the reverence of canonical imagery, de Ascanio paints stories depicting her contemporaries, reimagining ancient narratives with female protagonists. While these characters are portraits of artists and performers, their deification as female warriors, witches and goddesses imbue them with individual talismanic powers from creation and fecundity to strength and rebirth.