Her work involves melted plastic, latex, and an institutional show at London’s ICA.
Photography: Leo Adef
ARCA, the mother of industrial reggaeton; the trans queer icon on our URGENT issue cover; the eternal shapeshifter, our favourite mutant-slash-angel– has taken up a new artistic venture: painting!
And it’s not just a bedroom hobby. The Venezuelan producer (eight albums deep, including the Kick pentalogy) has opened her first institutional exhibition, Angels, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, running 4–19 April, marking her return to the space where she first performed live vocals over a decade ago.
The artwork feels exactly like you’d expect Arca paintings to feel: excessive, disruptive, birthed from oils, acrylic, spray paint, marker, glitter, latex, melted plastic—basically anything that can be layered, smeared, or violently applied. The ICA describes the figures as suspended between “emergence and dissolution.” She calls them “mutants and angels,” which is either biblical or biotech or both.
Arca started making them in the aftermath of burnout. The paintings became a way back into feeling. Before she became a worldwide icon, she was a teenager in Caracas, alone in her bedroom, uploading 3D renders to DeviantArt as fast as the family computer could process them.
On view at ICA London until April 19
Words by Pykel van Latum
