The frayed edges of the canvas, the cuts and scrapes slashing through the fabric like a botched surgery, the chaotic, graffiti-style painting of cats smiling back at you — it’s the work of someone processing deep, psychological wounds. Known for her experimental sound and enchanting DJ sets, Venezuelan musician Arca shows off her multidisciplinary artistic talent in her latest exhibition of her Angels series at the ICA in London, on display until 19 April.
Arca has opened up to the world about her emigration from Venezuela at age seventeen, documented her transition publicly, and detailed her experience with burnout. Her vulnerability shows strength and creates a strong base of support from her fans who feel connected to her life experiences. Coupled with her groundbreaking musical talent, Arca has transformed into a household name in the world of electronic music, but her talent doesn’t stop there.
After a whirlwind decade writing and producing her signature sound, Arca felt overwhelmed and drained by the music industry and having to constantly be on the next move. Music had once been a thing that offered an emotional escape from the daily turmoil she experiences as a trans woman, so when music started to feel less like an escape and more like a chore, she needed to pivot and find a new diversion. Her Angels series was a mechanism to unleash all of that pent-up anger, frustration, and fear.
The layers of her emotional state at the time of creating the mixed-media paintings are echoed in each coat of paint covering the previous to produce a multidimensional canvas. Looking at the collection, it feels like a wall of graffiti art that’s been painted over multiple times by different artists, almost like a time capsule of street art.
The forms in the paintings are like mutated cats (which Arca considers angels) with whiskers that overlay the eyes and mouths as wide as Heath Ledger’s in The Dark Knight. Her mutant angel-cats represent a very important dichotomy: the ugliness of something considered divine. In classical biblical literature, angels are not beautiful cherubs but an ugly mass of feathered wings covering their bodies.
We can’t make out exactly what’s in front of us on the canvas, but that’s the point. Arca created these pieces when she couldn’t tell what direction her career or personal life was heading towards. There was a personal limbo she couldn’t treat or avoid. The slashes in some of the canvases are like Arca clawing her way out of that limbo, desperately attempting to find stable ground. The works of Angels “remain suspended between emergence and dissolution, force and restraint, concentration and drift.”
This collection represents a deeply tumultuous and uncertain time in Arca’s life, a feeling almost everyone can relate to. Based on her intimate experience with transitioning, displacement, and losing love for her passion, Angels probes our own vulnerabilities in a viscerally introspective fashion.
