Arca debuts 'Angels' paintings at London ICA
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Arca is opening her first institutional exhibition at London's ICA, showing paintings collectively titled "Angels" that she originally never intended to display publicly
- The canvases were produced in a communal yard in Barcelona using oils, acrylic, spray paint, marker pen, glitter, latex, and melted plastic, with Ghersi sometimes stabbing the works with a knife
- Ghersi turned to painting after burning out across a decade that included eight albums, her Kick pentalogy, collaborations with Björk and Rosalía, and support slots for Beyoncé and Madonna
- The queer, transgender artist described the work as "a way of processing different violences that I had survived, those I compartmentalised to make my life seem more stable"
- Ghersi's last studio album Kick iiii came out in 2021; no new material appeared until dreamy Sola and "aggressively horny rap" Puta surfaced a year ago, and a new mixtape is now forthcoming
- The imagery draws on Old Testament godly wrath, 11th-century mystics, and psychoanalysis, depicting "Cheshire cat grins, gurning clowns and wide-eyed demons" that Ghersi calls "both mutants and angels"
Why it matters: Arca's first institutional show at London's ICA reveals paintings she made privately to recover from a decade of music-industry burnout, and she credits that canvas work with unblocking her forthcoming mixtape — the first original music since 2021's Kick iiii. The exhibition offers a rare public look at the visceral, trauma-processing imagery behind one of electronic music's most experimental careers.
Ask SkimNews
