Ascha

I am a British artist and photographer specialising in constructing enchanting fairy tale narratives exploring ideas surrounding space as a utopia, escapism and magical realism. I have always been attracted to the romantic notion of running away with the circus or flying out into outer space and have come to the realisation that my work is about the fantasy and escapism based on my own psychology…


The context behind my work stems from Sigmund Freud’s ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’ 1929. 
On humans, Freud said “They cannot subsist on the scanty satisfaction they can extort from reality” – 
He thought that we are suppressed because of the society that we live in, and thus escapism fantasy was necessary to the life of humans.

I am further inspired by Joseph Cornell whose methodology relates to my own, and on whom I wrote my dissertation during my fine art studies, which relates back to my whole practice. Other influences that play a role in my work are the theatre, shop windows, nostalgia and the vintage.

I work within the mediums of photography, painting, drawing, dance and performance. Over the years what I have realised about my practice is the recurring use of cutouts and making photomontages with them to create new narratives, and also the making of objects or doing a performance with the view to photographing them. I feel that my creative process allows me to be anyone, do anything, and go anywhere…

Further reading


Ascha is an only child and spent a lot of her childhood in solitude, often preferring the fantasy world of her imagination to the reality of the sober world around her. Days would be spent with antique dolls, re-creating a decadent world of yesteryear, a time and place when the world would appear to be a fairground attraction, a place where primal joy existed.

You can see in Ascha’s work the reflection of the haze and simplicity of a child-like memory of those decadent days so strongly imagined. There is a simplistic lustfulness and romanticism that is revealed in the style used to represent imagined fantasies and memories in a time and place unaffected by all the modern and mundane complications of life.