Bianca Raffaella: A world of blurred vision
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bianca Raffaella is a partially sighted painter based in Margate. Working entirely by touch and memory, her flower and figure paintings emerge from a world of blurred vision, visual static, and sensory recall. Raffaella paints what she perceives in flickers, dappled fragments of colour, flashes of form, shaped through instinct, fingertips, and palette knives. Sahar Zand meets Bianca in her studio, as she works on her latest project. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | This program contains references to an eating disorder. |
| 0:10.4 | I see my paintings completely differently to obviously a fully cited person. |
| 0:16.6 | And I'm trying to portray how I see my reality, my visual experiences. |
| 0:22.3 | And there's something quite magical about that because it's like the secret of seeing. |
| 0:27.1 | It's like the secret experience of my sight. |
| 0:31.1 | Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, |
| 0:35.1 | the program that follows the creative journey of artists from around the world. |
| 0:39.9 | I'm Sahar Zand, exploring the world of British artist, Bianca Raphaela. |
| 0:45.4 | Hello, my name is Bianca Raphaela, and I'm a painter. |
| 0:50.0 | My art is a reflection of my identity of being partially sighted and living in the visual world. |
| 0:58.5 | Bianca's work is shaped by the shifting limits of her sight. |
| 1:02.8 | Drawing from lived experience, she chooses subjects that are accessible to her, |
| 1:07.7 | using them to express how she sees the world. |
| 1:10.9 | Working largely through touch and memory, |
| 1:14.1 | her paintings emerge from a landscape of blur, |
| 1:17.4 | visual static and sensory recall. |
| 1:20.5 | Having completed a residency under Dane Tracy Emin, |
| 1:24.9 | her work has been widely exhibited, |
| 1:30.5 | including major solo shows and is increasingly sought after for their distinctive ethereal quality, hovering between visibility and disappearance. |
| 1:37.8 | And they're quite difficult to see for the fully cited viewer because they are, they're |
| 1:42.0 | depleting, they're fragmenting, they're disappearing. |
... |
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