Arca's First Institutional Exhibition at ICA London Features Paintings Created After Music Industry Burnout

The Venezuelan musician Arca, whose real name is Alejandra Ghersi, is presenting her first institutional exhibition at the ICA in London. The show features paintings from her Angels series, created during a period of burnout following a decade-long music career. Ghersi, 36, turned to painting as a therapeutic process to reconnect with creativity after falling out of love with music production. She describes the works as emerging from a trance-like state, using oils, acrylic, spray paint, marker pen, glitter, latex, and melted plastic on canvas. The paintings depict nightmarish faces with Cheshire cat grins, gurning clowns, and wide-eyed demons. Ghersi produced these works in a communal yard in Barcelona, where she now lives, sometimes stabbing the materials with a knife. She views the paintings as both 'mutants and angels,' drawing from Old Testament imagery and 11th-century mystics. The artist's early interest in visual art began in her teens in Caracas, where she uploaded 3D animations to DeviantArt. Her music career included collaborations with Björk and Rosalía, supporting Beyoncé and Madonna in concert, and releasing eight albums, including the Kick pentalogy. Her last studio album, Kick iiiii, came out in 2021, with new tracks Sola and Puta appearing a year ago. Ghersi, who is queer and transgender, discusses her isolated childhood in Caracas and Connecticut, where she felt out of place. She returned to Venezuela for a Boiler Room party two years ago, with Amnesty International representatives present due to LGBTQ+ safety concerns. Ghersi credits painting with enabling her to work through trauma and prepare for a forthcoming album.