Bianca Raffaella: She Cannot Fade

5 Sep-11 Oct 2025

Overview

Flowers Gallery is pleased to present She Cannot Fade, a new series of monoprints by British artist and activist Bianca Raffaella, on view from 5 September through to 11 October. Following her first major solo exhibition at the gallery earlier this year, the latest presentation will see Raffaella build on the foundational themes of memory, perception, and fragility that anchor her practice.

Executed in collaboration with master printmaker Richard Spare, these innovative works push the limits of traditional printmaking, using the underexplored medium of acrylic monoprinting. Working wet-on-wet with layers of acrylic and water, Raffaella paints directly onto reflective copper plates, primarily using her fingertips, before the surface dries, capturing fleeting impressions in quick, expressive gestures. This spontaneous, tactile process reflects her lived experience of visual impairment, translating uncertainty into a physical and creative act.

At the heart of the exhibition are portraits that emerge at varying proximities. Each print reveals different degrees of detail and distortion, mirroring the instability of visual perception and the intimacy of looking. From Just Imagine and Be, with its fine detailing of the facial features and subtle blue tones, to She Cannot Fade, rendered in soft white acrylic that appears almost ghostly. These portraits are at once personal and abstract, offering a glimpse into the artist’s emotional relationship with visibility, identity, and memory. “Some of the prints are hardly there,” Raffaella notes, a reminder of the elusive, shifting nature of her own reflections.

The title She Cannot Fade draws from Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, published in 1820, chosen by the artist for its quiet insistence on presence and preservation. The phrase also recalls advice once given to Raffaella’s mother by her early medical consultants: “see what she can see, and not what she can’t see.” This idea resonates throughout the show as a quietly radical approach to both disability and perception.

Each monoprint is a one-off, unrepeatable and resistant to reproduction. The works balance fragility and resilience, creating space for viewers to contemplate their own ways of seeing, knowing, and connecting. She Cannot Fade invites us to pause in the uncertain spaces between clarity and obscurity, offering a rare sensory encounter with the world as experienced through the artist’s eyes. 

Artists