Cassandra Yap’s upcoming showcase Becoming at EDiT. Covent Garden explores femininity, the feather as a medium, and the tension between beauty and darkness.

Showing at our Covent Garden gallery from the 8th to the 31st of May.

Join us for drinks and to meet the artist from 6pm on Thursday 7th May. Email coventgarden@editart.co.uk to RSVP.

Cassandra creates work using a range of materials and processes from hand foiling to screen printing, meaning the work she produces is as tactile as it is visually arresting. Butterflies and skulls litter her practice alongside her pin ups and feathers. 

Cassandra studied graphic design before working in advertising for ten years. What began as a personal creative outlet has developed into a full time practice. Her eye for detail and her awareness of graphic elements run throughout her work, giving each piece clarity while still allowing space for experimentation.

Her ‘Bombshell Butterfly Cyanotype’ is a great example of Cassandra's technical skill and killer eye and concept. Here the cyanotype print features glamorous bombshells captured within the delicate shape of a butterfly. It's a symbol of metamorphosis and freedom. A touch of 24ct gold leaf on the butterfly’s antenna completes a piece that celebrates glamour and the enduring beauty of transformation.

That sense of experimentation sits at the centre of Cassandra’s process. She is drawn to the organised chaos of screenprinting, the balance between preparation and unpredictability. When she lifts the screen, there is a moment where everything either works or it does not. Cassandra often jokes that black ink is her nemesis, it gets everywhere.

Cassandra also prints onto ‘playing cards’, making something cheeky into something very precious and breathing new life into a vintage object. Some of these ‘Playing Cards’ carry tiny pin up figures, turning everyday objects into small scale artworks.

Cassandra’s use of feathers is central to Becoming. She was first drawn to them through their association with femininity, but in her hands they become something more layered. The softness of the feather contrasts with the bold presence of the female form she prints onto it. The material holds movement, making each work feel unsettled and alive.

Feathers carry a long cultural history. They appear in fashion, in burlesque, and in costume, in spaces where femininity is performed and constructed. Cassandra draws on this visual language while also questioning it, asking what it means to place the female form onto something that can shift and fly away.

In Cassandra’s practice, the feather becomes more than a surface. It becomes a place where ideas of beauty, nature, movement, and femininity meet. Her work holds this tension, allowing the feather to remain delicate while carrying something more direct.

This is especially obvious in her choice of imagery. Cassandra reappropriates the female pin popularised in the 1950s, shifting it away from passive display. Her figures feel more self aware. Printed onto a feather, they are no longer fixed. They suggest movement, escape, and autonomy. Cassandra’s pin ups have wings.

Cassandra’s work plays on the relationship between beauty and darkness; the aesthetic and the symbolic. She pushes printmaking through her choice of surface, using it to challenge familiar imagery. In doing so, she reworks the narrative around the female form, allowing it to feel more intentional and owned.

For Cassandra, creating this new collection for Becoming has felt like a natural progression. Although it is her most challenging feather work to date, the ideas have come easily and the process has felt instinctive. That balance sits at the centre of her practice and is visible across the work she showcases.

As a London based artist, Cassandra’s favourite thing is to go on an exhibition date with her friends, then reliably get pulled into an art supplies shop. Here, Cassandra is just a child in a sweet shop. She wants to take it all home and start creating. 

Becoming, a solo showcase from Cassandra Yap, runs at EDiT. Covent Garden from the 8th to the 31st of May. Join us for drinks on the 7th May from 6pm - please email coventgarden@editart.co.uk to R.S.V.P.