Alessia Ascolani

I am a multimedia artist born in London, England, with a background in design. I work in digital collage, animation, and experimental media to build surreal, often unsettling worlds. My thesis project, Slashing the Stereotype, is a short mixed-media film that flips the script on traditional horror tropes, especially the typical gender norms of the genre. In most horror films, women are cast as victims while men take on the role of the killer. I wanted to challenge that narrative. In Slashing the Stereotype, the killer is a woman, driven by an obsession with beauty standards. Her violence becomes a darkly humorous reflection of the unrealistic pressures women face around appearance. By exaggerating the conventions of the slasher genre, I look at how femininity, rage, and humor can coexist and how horror can serve as a tool to expose societal expectations, rather than reinforcing them.