M HKA Ensembles

Painting, 80 x 60 cm.

Collection: Private Collection, Antwerp.

Arca, born in Caracas in 1989, is a Venezuelan musician, singer, composer, record-producer, mixing engineer, performance artist and DJ based in Barcelona. She is creating community, music, art, sound design, philosophy, and visual art. She has released four studio albums (Xen (2014), Mutant (2015), Arca (2017) and Kick I (2020)) to critical praise, and has contributed production work to artists such as Björk, Kanye West, FKA twigs, Kelela, and Frank Ocean.

“As a kid, I spent a lot of my mental energy hiding who I was and attempting to fit in”, she says of her childhood in Venezuela, a country where, as she puts it “if I dressed the way I do here I’d be in physical danger”. “And as an adult, I spend a lot of energy in my work making sure that I celebrate the things I was once hiding.”

Arca’s art and music is the loud and affirmative answer to the question: can music and pop culture still be pushed beyond the visual and musical boundaries that artists set before? When you think you’ve seen and heard it all before, it’s clear that you haven’t seen and/or listened to Arca.

https://www.arca1000000.com