Ritual, Mythology and the Reimagining of Female Power
There is a rare sense of total immersion within the work of Rafaela de Ascanio. Moving fluidly between painting, sculpture and installation, her practice constructs environments that feel suspended between mythology, archaeology and speculative fiction. Ceramics become vessels of memory and ritual, paintings unfold like fragments of ancient narratives, and entire spaces transform into contemporary temples charged with symbolism, atmosphere and emotional intensity. Across her work, female archetypes are continuously reimagined, not as static historical references, but as living presences shaped through power, vulnerability, transformation and reinvention.
Drawing equally from Catholic iconography, folklore, feminist histories, esoteric traditions and science fiction, De Ascanio creates a visual language that bridges ancient matriarchal cultures with contemporary womanhood. Her installations are not simply designed to be viewed, but experienced physically and emotionally through sound, texture, colour, ritual and spatial encounter. Whether referencing tarot, witchcraft, volcanic landscapes, pop culture deities or imagined archaeological futures, her work consistently asks how stories evolve across generations and how symbols of femininity continue to shift within modern culture.
Recent presentations, including her solo exhibition at Sketch, have further expanded this immersive approach, placing her practice within environments where art, design and theatrical experience intersect. At the heart of De Ascanio’s work lies a fascination with transformation: the transformation of myth into image, of history into fiction, and of physical materials into emotionally charged objects that carry the imprint of the artist’s hand.
In this conversation with The Flux Review, De Ascanio reflects on the origins of her interdisciplinary practice, the mythology of female power, sacred space, the tactile nature of making, and the evolving narratives that continue to shape her work today.
Your practice spans painting, sculpture and installation, often creating immersive environments that feel both ancient and otherworldly. Could you tell us about your journey into art, and how this interdisciplinary language developed?
Well, to answer this, I have to consider the different elements within my practice.
The 1st is painting, drawing and painting, which began with my mother, who is an artist. She would give me pastels and pencils for Christmas and take me to museums, and I was really interested in going on that journey with her, discovering, drawing and painting, and self-portraiture.
So that began then, at a very young age. After that, in my teens, I was that child who spent a lot of time in the library. Researching, reading. Rather than doing my schoolwork I was reading into alternative things and I was predominantly looking up women, stories about women. Witchcraft. I was desperate for a literature and mythology surrounding powerful women. I think that when you feel young and in your teens you feel quite out of control, so I was looking for role models and I would find books like ‘the world’s wickedest women’ or the femme fatale. Obviously later on I discovered these kind of archetypes also smother what it is to be a woman, but at the time they were a sort of starting point for inspiration and definitely continue into the work that I produce today, though I try to flesh them out more. So when I think about these ancient characters, Nefertiti or Elizabeth Bathory (the 1st vampire), great dancers and singers, and goddesses; these characters all still remain with me and I try and link them up to contemporary women today. I want to bridge that gap between ancient matriarchal cultures and contemporary female power.
Skipping through a lot of Christianity and those overtly patriarchal periods. Obviously, there are really interesting people within that period, for example, Hildegard von Bingen, is an example of somebody who was a polymath and who really wielded her power and knew how to use the system. She pretended that God was speaking through her, so that she had an authoritarian voice. In fact these were her own thoughts, that she was expressing, but being able to shroud them in this idea that God was talking through her, she was able to communicate with emperors and popes, and have a real following, as well as do things like write philosophy and compose Gregorian chant.
So I got really into the mythology of women and my installations are about recreating these worlds. I spent a lot of time in churches when I was little. I was brought up a very strict Catholic, Spanish Catholic, quite a heavy type Catholicism, that depicted by Lorca. And because of this I do understand the framework of the ritual, the space, the visual, the sound, the smells, and the need for that sort of community and inspirational spaces. What I am interested in is recreating those spaces today, hopefully much bigger ones eventually. Where you walk into a space and it is the woman that we are, the female power that we are worshiping and seeking inspiration from.
This is what these installations are where you’re looking at different types of objects. Ceramics, which are imbued with the history, with an archaeological history that could survive for a very long time, and that are vessels that hold stories, hold nurture. And then painting which again, is something that you can think back to a cave painting and the importance of humans replicating what they’re seeing. And then you can think forward to the Arnolfini Chapel, where the same thing is happening. A created cave (the chapel) where a story is being developed within an elclosed space.
So this is how the 3 elements come together. I really started ceramics because my husband was throwing ceramic vases and I started glazing them, painting them and glazing them, and then that sort of took off. Then after that, I began coiling and I became absolutely obsessed with coiling pieces and using my hands and being able to create my own 3D canvases, which then I could paint onto. That sort of symbiosis of painting and sculpture, the conversation that goes on between them, not only within the sculpture itself, but then looking back at the oil paintings.
All of these come together and the dream is to also activate the space through dance, performance, poetry, a gathering, or some sort of ritual that brings it to life because that really is the point of creating these miniature temples.
You draw on a wide range of references, from mythology and folklore to science fiction and esoteric traditions. What first drew you to these narratives, and how do they continue to shape your work today?
I’ve gone into a little bit of why references to mythology, folklore and science fiction, esoteric traditions, is so embedded in my work. I actually have my English family to thank for that.
When I was a small child, my grandmother, who’s from Dartmoor in Devon, had a book on the shelf, which was called ´Scots The Discoverie of witchcraft`(1584). It was a fire burnt book which looks like the book from Hocus Pocus. It’s incredible. Written in the 16th century Scot´s idea was to try to dispel witchcraft as a myth. Its publishers also published early the first Shakespeare texts, and coincidentally he used its spells as references for Macbeth. It was really old I was so attracted to it, and I would pick it up all the time, and even though it was there to dispel the validity of witchcraft (and to essentially protect women from being burnt) it actually lists a lot of spells. So I got really into that and I got really into the imagery and although it is very difficult to read, there was something about the the weight, the power that this book held and I was fascinated by looking at it.
Eventually one year I came back, I think I must have been 13, at this point my father had already given me a pack of tarot cards, which were banned at my Catholic school. He’s the one who got me into science fiction, and that had already been built into our childhood; an element of fantasy. He was always telling us there was a witch around the corner and we loved that.
When I came back one year, the book was missing and when I asked what had happened to the book, they said they’d sold it. My grandmother had always said, be very careful looking at that book and when we would go to Dartmoor, she´d say be careful on the moors. Even though she was that typical, post-war grandmother who was very rational and got on with things there was always this subtle belief in the pixies of the moors and how there is a magic in the world that you need to be aware of, which belongs to that part of England.
Anyway apparently they had sold the book and years later when I married my 2nd husband my uncle came up to me and he said, I heard you had a particular love for this book as a child, it wasn’t sold, we were just afraid of you using it and here it is as a wedding gift. It was all bound up in tissue and rope and I opened it up and I was just overjoyed.
It’s one of those things that I always thought I would do something with it, but I haven’t actually been able to touch on it yet. I don’t know if there’ll be a particular point in life where I feel like I can open it up and and really delve back into it, but it is a kind of a sacred piece to me. One of those objects that means a lot to me about what the history of witchcraft and womanhood is and our role as herbalists, shamans and doctors, who can read the future, who can feel energies and our importance in the community. I like how this book links back to that old English archetype of the witch. So that really is where that sort of narrative was catalyzed: the attraction to witchcraft and tarot and the mysterious that belongs in nature.
Your recent solo exhibition at Sketch, a renowned and highly artistic dining and cocktail destination in Mayfair founded by Mourad Mazouz and Pierre Gagnaire, places your work within a setting where art, design and hospitality converge. How did this context influence your approach to the exhibition, and did it shift your thinking around audience and experience?
I was excited to do the show at Sketch because just as we were discussing my exhibition the curator, Millie Wright was just curating the Jonathan Baldock show of ceramics. I’m a big fan of his, so that was really exciting and I got to go to his opening dinner which was such an incredibly glamorous event. Mourad did a speech and I thought he was a very compelling character and there was a weighty book handed out documenting the history of sketch, 24 years or whatever it’s been. It had really funny things like the critique, the terrible reviews they got at the beginning because critics were outraged at how expensive it was, but also, you know, fascinating things like his friendship with Tracy Emin and the exciting way that projects evolved organically, like the famous egg loos, which were dreamt up overnight. I’m really attracted to spaces where you can sense the personality of its founder, and that vision still continues today.
Millie already had an idea of how to display it from the beggining. I sent images of what I was working on, and she already had this wonderful idea of having the 3 archways covered in wallpaper, which she’d seen me do previously in exhibitions, and then inserting the sculptures into them. And then having this large painting, `Goodnight Moon´, along the entrance wall with other large paintings around it and also on wallpaper. She has a great eye and she immediately saw what it could look like. She took what I have done previously with wallpapers and installations and knowing her exhibition space very well, brought the 2 together. And it was a seamless display, the day that it was put up, it looked exactly how she had imagined it.
There is a strong presence of female figures and deities throughout your work. How do you approach reimagining these archetypes within a contemporary context?
We need more icons around us of women that make us as young women think, `oh, I can see the power there, I can see where I can achieve such dream or desire`. That give you confidence, daily affirmation, not the sort of affirmation we’re getting all the time about beauty and submission, but what I want to see is things that are affirming, even fearsome. I want to implement more of that visual into my exhibitions.
But then I also want to give justice to a real woman, what is her life experience? How complex is it? How can she be so many different things at the same time? What are the traditionally `masculine parts` of her personality, and what `masculine roles` can she take on?
Then there is the discovery that I have had in the last 10 years, which was this intense physical vulnerability we have with bearing children, and having your body completely morphed and wounded in many situations. Then the hormones that course through you afterwards that keep you from returning to that woman that you felt like you were: losing yourself.
So there’s so many different facets to what it is to be a woman which have been historically ignored. And I want to see images of real, inspirational women around me.
One of the ways that I try and connect the 2 – deity and contemporary woman – is through singers. For me, musicians, like pop culture musicians are, are super inspiring because they capture the imagination. And I think that they can take on these deific roles. For example, in the large vessel in the show, ´Bjork sends sea serpents`, I’ve changed the goddess Athena, who sent serpents to silence the Trojan Laocoon and his sons, into Bjork. This image of Bjork dressed up in one of her wild, all-encompassing outfits, a very bulbous one with her arms striking out, in a bright green fabric, comes from one of her latest videos. Bjork is such a fantastic representation of a woman who does things her own way, who’s unique and uses her creativity to wield power, to inspire and promote messages. She is also a good example of somebody that is universally loved and looked up to. And we learn and sing her songs as if they were prayers.
In this piece I am trying to make that connection between her and a goddess, not because I want to be putting her on a pedestal, but because I think of her as somebody that can inspire women to be themselves and to explore the many strange and unstandardized forms of herself.
Your works often feel like artefacts from an imagined past, almost archaeological in nature. What interests you about this tension between history, fiction and invention?
I love to play on the concept of an archaeological site, and take that even further. I had a show in 2019 called the Deccan Traps, about a future in which different planets existed on TripAdvisor.
Instead of a press release I had a Tripadvisor page where a future traveller is going to go visit an archaeological site on this planet called Earth. The reviews all say different things about how the site is well kept or a bit tired and what it says about that particular civilization. And in this site there was a homoerotic slant and I painted several naked men who posed together watching these volcanic eruptions, watching the world end. I was probably inspired by Pompei, but also I am from the Canary Islands, which are these volcanic islands, and I think about the Guanche civilisation that we Canarians descend from and how to piece together their animist, meritocratic beliefs that both feared and loved the land.
Using archeological sites and science fiction allows a playful framework in which we can imagine looking back on our present through a future lens.
And artist who did this recently and very well was Toyin Ojih Odotula at the Barbican. She used a fictionalised text of, I think it was historians or archaeologists who, were documenting a civilization that the artist had created through these incredible charcoal images, depictions of the gender hierarchy upended.
I find looking back at past cultures to tell us something about how societal norms shift a helpful frame for viewing today. In many ways, we don’t question this current culture, this patriarchal culture, overarched by 2000 years of Christianity and other major religions. Recently it seems to be going back and forth; we thought we were moving towards a more equal society, and then it’s going backwards again. It is interesting to think of us on this long spectrum of history where women can be the real underdog or can hold the same position or power and importance as men, and perhaps not be so vilified. There is often talk about how the world would probably be better if there were more women at higher levels. There’s more empathy, on the whole, and less desire for power, for power’s sake, but more for the greater good. Perhaps I am being naive and maybe women would all turn into power hungry lunatics, once they got to the top!
Science fiction plays a really interesting role in reflecting on gender. For example Ursula K. Le Guin´s ´ The Left Hand of darkness` is another really good example of this. It’s such a beautiful, romantic story about how our gender changes, depending on how we love and which circumstances we’re in. I find that such a poignant story, one that really rings true with me; that I can wear my different caps depending where I am in life, who I’m surrounded by, and who I am in love with.
You work across multiple mediums, from ceramics to painting. How does each material shift your thinking?
The beauty of working predominantly in 2 distinct mediums is that you can attack the same subject from different perspectives.
With painting, I would say for me, it’s a very expressive and ephemeral experience where I build up over several days towards making a painting, by doing sketches and thinking and writing. And then eventually when I’ve completely set my scene perfectly, and I feel ready, I’ll delve into a painting and it will take me one or 2 days to complete. I have to capture that feeling, and all of that prologue before is so important to it.
Whereas with ceramics, it’s a slow process, slow from the beginning to end. It still has a similar development process, but what happens is the build takes a long time. And the thinking can happen throughout building the sculpture, whether it be a vase or it be a head or a deific object, the building is so slow as it is creating my own 3D canvas.
And then the under glaze painting part is very slow. Rather than having the flow of oil paint, it is with a small paintbrush dipping into the paint and painting a stroke, dipping in and painting. And then clarifying with several layers so that when it is fired the pigments don’t evaporate and get lost.
Coil building and glazing is a meditative process. The piece also has to go in the kiln at least once, if not 2 times, maybe 3 times. This is another experience in itself in which you don’t know how it’s going to come out, and it’s an evolving piece.
Ceramics has a patient methodology, whereas oil painting for me, is about capturing an energy. So they are completely different and often, when I’m researching a subject, I will paint it both through an oil painting and then also through making a sculpture and painting on that. And it means I get to tackle the subject in a different way, in a different form and in a different way of thinking.
There is a tactile, handmade quality in your work that foregrounds process and the presence of the artist’s hand. How important is this physicality in relation to the themes you explore?
In many ways, this is quite a short answer because objects have energy, and only the artist’s hand can capture that exact energy.
Of course if we’re talking about a big production, like a performance or installation, it is different because you’ve got the artist’s greater vision which then imbues other people to create it. So I’m not saying you always have to have the direct hand of the artist, but you do always have to have the spirit of the artist to move that energy.
Touching an object is a crucial process to me, and which is why I haven’t necessarily been concerned, maybe, naively again, about AI. People have made a 1000 vases before me. And people and perhaps robots will continue to make vases in the future, or old paintings, or on the subject of women. None of these subjects or mediums are new.
But, and I don’t know how important I am, but I know that I’m making these works and that is what makes them unique. So the artist’s hand, the actual artist´s hand, the tactility, the touch that you leave behind is essential. I always encourage people to touch my sculptures so they can feel, or their body can feel where a finger, a thumb, a hand has been. And then, that, hopefully enters into their spirit and moves them.
Many of your installations create a sense of ritual or sacred space. Do you see your exhibitions as environments to be entered rather than simply viewed?
Yes, my installations are for people to experience, not simply view. Nothing brings me greater joy than when somebody connects with one particular element of the show.
But I am well aware of the importance of a sacred or charged space to encourage the viewer to feel something. This is an ancient human trick, let’s say, of creating an awesome space, so that the feeling of awe can be triggered.
And so all the different elements are important to me. The sound, the smell, the lighting, the visuals, the ambience, the people who are in the space already creating a feeling of calm or excitement, whatever it might be. The entirety is a ritual which I would like the viewer to partake in.
The question of color is a really interesting one, because when I was making most of my work in the UK, I was reaching out for those kind of millennial purples and pinks and acidic colors, and I think there was something about the grey skies in London, or the vibrancy of London contrasting the grey skies, that I needed that vibrancy in my colour palette.
And then when I began making work in Madrid 2 years ago, I spent a lot of time in the Prado looking at Velasquez and Goya.The earthiness of their palettes started to really come through in my painting. Driving around Spain you see so much of it is dry and deserted and this started seeping into my work also: each piece begins with a wash of Burnt Sienna.
And now I’m coming to a place where I’m bringing the 2 together again, the subdued palette with pops of more vibrant hues.
Having studied both art history and painting, how do you navigate the relationship between historical reference and contemporary image-making in your work?
I think of art history in the same way as my experience growing up as a Catholic. It is a structure that I was taught, of which I can take elements, clever frameworks, and reuse them in a way that makes sense to me. So it’s like taking the structure of language and developing it into poetry rather than something fixed. It can be referenced and played with.
I studied at the Courtauld Institute in a time when we were still predominantly looking at male artists. And luckily I had a tutor there called Dr. Sarah Wilson, who really inspired a whole group of us when we took her course `Gender and performance art in the 20th century´. (one time I did a presentation of the queer, catholic ex priest turned artist Michel Journiac by masquerading as him!)
Finally, discovering these incredible female artists, queer artists and performance artists all pulling apart gender, I started to see the other side. And from there, I was able to play with the two, take the structure of art history, the form, and impose a new image upon it, which is that of the woman and the delightful spectrum of gender.
Your work engages with themes of femininity, power and transformation. How do these ideas evolve across different bodies of work?
This is a more difficult question to answer because I have to really think about all the different projects that I’ve done.
They always are led by research. During COVID, I had a solo show, `Universal Yearnings`, where I was looking at the planets and how many of them are named after male gods that could easily have been named after female goddesses. Neptune for example could have been Salacia, who is his partner, and also co-ruler of the seas.I liked how Venus, was thought to be this sort of heavenly planet in the 70s, and then once a robot got down there, discovered that it was an absolute hell, a blistering hot volcanic, lightening storm hell. I was fascinated and amused by this misunderstanding. And the fact that depending on when humans are looking at something, a story is either science or a myth. So before then, it was science that Venus was this hospitable, heavenly planet, and then that story became a myth. And what we believe we `know` right now about science and about the planet, scientifically about the planets, will eventually evolve as we learn more. And these will likely become myths. So it’s not that different to the stories that have been told in antiquity about planets.
That was one theme that I was really interested in. Another subject that I got into for my show at the Pump House with Berntson Bhattacharjee gallery was very specifically of these 2 witches (one woman riding a big cat, the other a floral broom) that are painted on the ceiling of Schleswig Cathedral from around 1280. They seem to be portraits of the Norse Goddess Freyja, belonging to the old gods of the region, who with the coming of Christianity, became the represtation of heresy and witchcraft. But who is to say the artist who painted her and his contemporary churchgoers didn’t still secretly worship her and love her. When does the narrative symbol truly change?
This evolution of female deities and symbolism runs through all of my research in the last 8 years. Another favourite is how the Guanche people saw the sculpture of the Virgin of Candeleria, in the Canary Islands, as their goddess Chaxiraxi and now she is the patron saint of all the islands, blending the two religions. I’m really fascinated about how civilizations take old stories and reinvent them and they morph as time goes on. And I like to relate that back to our own current moment. What do we know from the past and how does that align with the present? Or how do we keep on evolving stories into the present?
Currently I have been exploring the power dynamic between a mother and a daughter, how the way that a mother educates her daughter in the home, will then ripple into her adult life and then into society at large. Both a privileged and burdened role.
Returning to the question there will always be a research element to my work, and then there will also be a more intimate part to it too. I look at stories that are ancient or well known and contemporary stories that surround me, bridging the 2 together.
Looking ahead, are there any forthcoming projects, exhibitions or new directions you are currently developing that you can share with us?
I’m about to go on a residency in Ceramica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico over the summer. I’ve been developing a project over several years, which is of creating a physical sanctuary, a temple to women. It is a project that I always have in the back of my mind- taking what is essentially my installations and making them into a semi-permanent space. During this residency I will make little 3D altarpieces where I’ll explore how this chapel could look on a larger scale.
Next month I’ll be exhibiting with Georgina, which is a fantastic gallery exhibiting works of female surrealists like Sofia Bassi and contemporary artists I admire like Vanessa Raw, that I was introduced to by Gemma Rolls-Bentley earlier this year.
And I´ve also been involved with a completely new medium to me, which I am quite excited about, but can only be revealed in the Autumn.