Spotlight: Lala Drona
A multi-talented Venezuelan-American painter, writer and performer, Lala Drona’s work pierces the illusions in which we coddle ourselves. Her perspectives on identity and women’s bodily experiences in the digital age are particularly profound. The PLU Team was delighted to meet with her last summer to conduct the following interview in the jardin de tuileries on a scorching day when even the famous fountains ran dry. Her work and words provide a window into a surreal and dystopian other-world, our future.
The digital age and the rise of social media has promoted the blurring of artist and art, viewer and viewed. On one hand, the possibilities for social connection, particularly between artists, are suddenly limitless. On the other hand, likes, clicks, and comments have become an addictive currency: they drive artists towards producing what will receive the most likes.
Often, it’s images of the female body that generate the highest return. This creates a double objectification. The woman is reduced to her body; the man is reduced to his gaze.
In this video, a poignant retrospective on her painting series, “Clickbait,” Lala asks if the “treatment of online bodies can also influence the treatment of real-world bodies.”
Title: Ctrl+V / Cmd+V, Acrylic on canvas 100cm x 100cm Seville Spain, 2018.
Other themes emerge. In the left-most panel of, “Between Us,” below, female figures in a tangle of limbs appear to be mounting stairs. The position of the leg of the rightmost figure suggests the group is climbing; their hands are pulling and pushing each other up. In the right-most panel, the foot on the bottom stair suggests the female figures are climbing down. The highest is nearly sitting in a throne. All the hands are pushing down on the woman below, and the woman on the bottom is flattened nearly to the floor.
When asked about this series in an interview with The Art Gorgeous, Lala asks: “Do [women] approach one another as ‘friends first, enemies later,’ or as ‘enemies first, and friends later’? And how can this contribute to systematic oppression?”
“Between Us” 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 100cm x 100cm. Part of a series exploring interactions between women: familial, maternal, performative.
Months of lockdown have disabused us of the notion that the marvels of modern technology make us freer. Instead, the means of control have just gotten increasingly sophisticated and we have grown to love our chains. Instead of creating human connection, online life has fostered an environment of voyeurism. “It’s not creepy if you ‘like’ it,” Lala tells us in this video, “The Box.”
Later, her idea of the box endures. Alongside other paintings during an exhibition in Gothenburg, Sweden, she projected this video onto the wall. Within four rigid walls the artist is trapped, pinned onto the canvas like one of her paintings.
“People are getting too comfortable with being liked... with making art or having behaviors that look good in a box”