about Lala
Artist Bio
Lala Drona is a Franco-American artist of Venezuelan heritage based in Paris. A graduate of the Royal College of Art (MA Painting), she has exhibited internationally, including Immanence at Robegago Gallery, Paris (2026), and her work has entered institutional collections, including the Musée Artistes Femmes, Lausanne.
Her paintings explore what she calls the "Abject Feminine," turning away from external appearance to reveal the body as interior, visceral, and uncanny. Her protocol began with watching her own filmed surgeries on repeat, then relying on somatic memory to translate them onto canvas. She sees her paintings as bodies or sites which never truly resolve.
An artist shaped by reconstructive surgeries and a bi-cultural upbringing among internet pioneers and entrepreneurs, Drona paints from the traces of lived corporeality. This is dangerous art, art with real stakes: the kind that raises the pulse before it settles, holding the viewer there long enough to find the beauty inside the discomfort. The body in her work is not a subject to be depicted but a force that spills beyond containment, a condition that remains permanently open.
Past exhibitions and artist talks with...
Artist CV
LALA DRONA
Selected Exhibitions
Jan-Mar 2026 Immanence, Group Show, Robegago Gallery, Paris
April 2024 Virtual Reverence, Solo Show, Elios Gallery, Paris
December 2024 Fall, Group Show, Beaconsfield Contemporary Gallery, London
July 2022
Video + Performance, Group Show, Millennium Film Workshop Inc., Brooklyn New York
October 2019 Bienvenue Art Fair, Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, La Cité des Arts, Paris France
Institutional Collections
Musée Artistes Femmes, Lausanne, Switzerland
Awards/Publications
2026 Prisma Art Prize Finalist, 20th edition
2024 Soho House International Artist Fellowship Recipient
Sept 2023 The Oxford Handbook of LGBTI Law, Painting "Proclaim" by Lala Drona selected for cover design
Aug 2023 La Revue no°2 by Espace Artistes Femmes Magazine, Article "There are no great young artists,"by Lala Drona
Talks and Public Programs
Jan 2025 Artist Talk: "A Recent Present" by Lala Drona, University of Creative Arts Farnham UK
May 2023 Artist Talk: "The Monstrous Feminine in Cinema and Fine Art" by Lala Drona, Soho House NYC
May 2021
Panelist: "Viral/Sustainable: digital and environmental art today," Edinburg College of Art
Education & Residencies
2025 Royal College of Art, Masters in Painting Programme, London UK
2024 Royal College of Art, Postgraduate Diploma in Art and Design, London UK
June 2018 - 2019 Artist in Residence: Seville Spain | Gothenburg Sweden | Kintai Lithuania
2015 École de cinéma et d'audiovisuel (EICAR), Directing and Screenwriting program, Paris France
2012 Bachelor of Arts University of Colorado at Boulder (Colorado, USA)
American Association of University Women Scholarship recipient
Press
May 2025
Artplugged
Article
"The Last Place We Felt: On the Fractured Bodies of Lala Drona"
by Len Gordon
May 2025
Interview, Carrie Scott's Seen Podcast S1E20
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apple podcast
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transcript
May 2024 Interview, Lala Drona on City of Muses Podcast, Paris Underground Radio
2008-2011
Studied and lived 2 years in South America
2012
Relocated to Paris, France
2018-2019
Completed a year of art residencies across four European countries
2024-2026
Completed MA in Painting at Royal College of Art London, the returned to Paris, France.