Rosanna Dean (b.1988) lives and works in London. She Graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2019 with an MA in Painting, BA Fine Art Painting Camberwell 2013 and studied at the Angel Academy in Florence 2015. She is currently an associate artist at the Oxford Centre for Hindu studies. Her work explores how the images we're surrounded by form our cultural framework and expectations, and the need to subvert historical narratives to tell new stories that offer different perspectives. Her starting points are often European art history paintings, she breaks apart these images and repaints them. Through mirroring, repeating and rearranging fragments, ungendered bodies emerge as both pattern and person, dissolving historical narratives, ideas, and modes of representation, while examining how the individual is constructed, how it meets the world, and how its visible boundary is not its limit. The construction, how it meets the world, and how its visible boundary is not its limit. The construction of her work is influenced by recurring patterns in nature, the visualisation of sound and our relationship with death and renewal. Her body is brought in and out of the work, a mode of operating and forming. The site of non-duality, of both pleasure, pain, death and birth. She interrogates the use and context of collage, the act of removal and erasure, and who gets to tell their story and with that authority.
Solo exhibitions include (upcoming) Salon Show, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach, USA (2025); Echolalia and Ende, Numbers, 63 Vyner St, London (2025).
Group exhibitions include Resistance, Limbo Gallery, Margate (2024); Kink, Maximillian Wolfgang Gallery, London (2024); Sadness is But a Wall Between Two Gardens, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London, UK (2024); Bootstrap Charity Group Show, Print House Gallery, London, UK (2023); The Maffioli Art Group, Scalpel Building, London, UK (2022); Economy of Errors, Ohsh Projects, 106 New Oxford Street, London (2021); FBA Futures, Mall Galleries, London, UK (2020); Kupala Festival Lunar Edition, Phytology, London, UK (2019); Hoovering: Enter the Vaccum, Red Lion's Boys Club, London, UK (2019); Critical Matter, The Dyson Gallery, London, UK (2019); East Wing Biennial 13, Surge, The Courtauld Insitute of Art, London, UK (2018); Thumbnails, Hockney Gallery, London, UK (2018).
Solo exhibitions include (upcoming) Salon Show, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach, USA (2025); Echolalia and Ende, Numbers, 63 Vyner St, London (2025).
Group exhibitions include Resistance, Limbo Gallery, Margate (2024); Kink, Maximillian Wolfgang Gallery, London (2024); Sadness is But a Wall Between Two Gardens, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London, UK (2024); Bootstrap Charity Group Show, Print House Gallery, London, UK (2023); The Maffioli Art Group, Scalpel Building, London, UK (2022); Economy of Errors, Ohsh Projects, 106 New Oxford Street, London (2021); FBA Futures, Mall Galleries, London, UK (2020); Kupala Festival Lunar Edition, Phytology, London, UK (2019); Hoovering: Enter the Vaccum, Red Lion's Boys Club, London, UK (2019); Critical Matter, The Dyson Gallery, London, UK (2019); East Wing Biennial 13, Surge, The Courtauld Insitute of Art, London, UK (2018); Thumbnails, Hockney Gallery, London, UK (2018).
Highlights and Collections
She has been Artist Associate at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (2023-2024) and Artist in Residence at Oxford University's Centre for Hindu Studies (2022-2023). She completed the LADA (Live Art Development Agency) Residency (2019) and Trelex Esp'Asse Residency in Switzerland (2019), as well as residencies at the Florence Trust (2015-2016) and with London Creative Network (2017). She was listed for the Winsor and Newton Painting Prize in 2015 and awarded second prize in the Curious Duke Secret Art Prize for Painting (2014). Her work can be found in public and private collections across the UK and Europe.