PRESS
Lala Drona (b. 1988) is a Venezuelan-American painter and videaste, born in Denver, Colorado. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado, Lala Drona has since published and exhibited her work internationally. Most recently, her videos and paintings exploring digital spaces and the female gaze, were shown at the Cite des Arts de Paris. Her paintings, videos, and writing explore the body, alternate realities, and women in the digital world. The totality of her artwork contributes to, and exists within a fictional universe and mythology established online and then recontextualized in the physical world through paint on canvas, performance, and sculpture. She is based in Paris, France.
Artist Statement:
Lala Drona plays with the idea of the mirror and reflectivity, alternate realities, the transitions through these realities and how they manifest in our daily lives. Refusing to choose just one medium, she paints, writes, and creates short films, all which take place in her artistic universe. The voyage from the virtual to the real, and vice versa, play a significant role within her practice, and she represents these transition with her use of symmetry and grayscale. She re-contextualizes virtual media (stories, digital art, and videos) in reality through paint and canvas, tying everything together to create a cohesive and complex narrative.
June-July 2019 Artist in Residence, Kintai Arts, Kintai Lithuania
Jan-Feb 2019 Artist in Residence, Konstepidemin, Gothenburg Sweeden
Nov-Dec 2018 Artist in Residence, Buinho Association, Alentejo Portugal
Aug-Oct 2018 Artist in Residence, Huekito AIR Program, Paris France
June/July 2018 Artist in Residence, AiRGentum, Seville Spain
Oct 2016 - March 2017 Artist in Residence, Le Lavoir, Ivry Sur Seine France
June / July 2015 EICAR Summer Workshop: Directing and Screenwriting program, Paris France
Sept 2012 - May 2013 Université de Paris - Sorbonne: French Language and Civilisation, Paris France
Sept 2006 - May 2012 Bachelor of Arts University of Colorado at Boulder (Colorado, USA)
American Association of University Women Scholarship recipient
March 2022 Dream House: A Collaborative Zine in Honor of the 50th
Anniversary of Womanhouse
April 2020 Unleashtheartist, Covod-19 Artist Platform Selection
Paintings, videos
Oct 2019 Post(blank),Vol. IV: Post(stranger)
Paintings
June 2019 Marietta Magazine Issue 2:
Interview by Erica Schreiner and images of paintings
May 2019 Maintenant 13: Dada Journal
Painting: Triptych "The power of the click"
April 2019 The Poetry Society of New York: Spilt Milk
Article on triptych "The Power of the Click"
Oct 2018 Wotisart Magazine, Issue 19
Painting: Triptych "The Power of the Click"
2017 Verses of April, Lala & Giono
Videos: La Politesse, The Physical
2012 Fiction Brigade: A collection of Flash Fiction
Painting : I'm not your Reality
2010 Sub-scribe Magazine, Nostalgia (Fall 2010)
Drawing: Outlander
Lala Drona (b. 1988) is a Venezuelan-American painter and videaste, born in Denver, Colorado. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado, Lala Drona has since published and exhibited her work internationally. Most recently, her videos and paintings exploring digital spaces and the female gaze, were shown at the Cite des Arts de Paris. Her paintings, videos, and writing explore “transitions between the virtual and the real” and “women in the digital world.” The totality of her artwork contributes to, and exists within a fictional universe and mythology established online and then recontextualized in the physical world through paint on canvas, performance, and sculpture. She is based in Paris, France.
As a multi-media artist, Lala has created The Lala World, a dystopian universe with Artists, Muses, and Drones where inspiration is currency. Lala Drona first established the world on her blog www.basedonafact.com where she writes articles which are based on her life and hyperbolized in order to fit into her world.
PUBLICATIONS / PRESS
EXHIBITIONS
Nov 2021 Interview, "Finding your inner femininity, channeling
difference into empowerment with artist Lala Drona" on
Finding Your Wave Podcast
Mar 2021 Interview with Paris Lit up, "Spotlight" series
May 2020 Interview with Only Woke, "At Home" series
Oct 2019 Report covering The Female Gaze at the Bienvenu Art Fair, at the Cité des Arts Paris, by Mathieu Mielesko Balul
Oct 2019 Featured in article on The Gaze of a Parisienne
"The Gaze of a Woman Artist" by Florence Briat-soulié
Aug 2019 The Art Gorgeous Article
"Three Fresh Takes on the Female Gaze" by Katya Lopatko
Feb 2019 Konstepidemin, Announcement of exhibition:
"The Box"
July 2018 El Correo de Andalucia, Article on exhibition: The Power of the Click
July 2018 ABCdesevilla, Article on exhibition :
The Power of the Click
EDUCATION / RESEARCH
Artist's CV
March 2022 Collective exhibition, "Entre exode, ouverture et création," Powerhouse, Lausanne Switzerland
May 2021 Guest Panelist, "Viral/Sustainable: digital and environmental art today," Edinburg College of Art
July 2020 Collective exhibition: First Responders, WOW Museum & Gallery, Texas USA
June 2020 Collective exhibition: Covideo-19 Notes, Undercurrent Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (online)
October 2019 Bienvenue Art Fair, Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, La Cité des Arts, Paris France
February 2019 Solo Exhibition: The Box, Konstepidemin, Gothenburg Sweden
May 2019 Live Art Performance: Experiment 88- Speak or Listen, Le Castel, Paris France
Aug/Sept 2018 Collective Exhibition: Lettres, Mots et Clics..., Galerie Art'et Miss, Paris France
July 2018 Solo Exhibition: The Power of the Click, Cultural Center Castilblanco, Seville Spain
May 2017 Public Radio Interview: 93.3 Beijing International Radio, Beijing China
October 2016 Collective Exhibition: Narcisse Obligé, Savonette Electrique, Montrueil France
October 2015 Collective exhibition: Je Suis..., La Maison des Ensembles, Paris France
December 2014 Solo exhibition: From the Bed to the Lab, Duo Gallery (currently T2 Gallery), Paris France
May 2013 Solo Exhibition: Paris 210 days, The Botek, Paris France
PUBLICATIONS
Her passion for storytelling through art started at a very young age, and she believes that she did not learn to make art, but rather lives it. Lala Drona’s work draws from cultural inconsistencies of growing up as a Venezuelan-American woman with a reconstructed left breast due to medical issues at age 15. Due to having a body which does not fit into commonly agreed upon western expectations of "woman," and having to augment that body at an early age in order to fit societal definitions, Lala Drona constantly redefines categories of identity within her work.
Lala Drona held her first solo exhibition “From the Bed to the Lab,” in Paris in December 2014, at Gallery Düo in Paris, France. The following year, she exhibited a triptych of paintings: “Je suis la fin qui justifie les moyens (I am the end that justifies the means)” at the collective exhibition Je suis…, an exhibition in response to the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. The triptych recounts a journey of self-rejection and self-acceptance, and marks the beginning of Lala Drona’s use of gray.
In 2016, she exhibited at the collective exhibition “Narcisse Obligé” in Paris, where she showed a painting/mirror installation titled “Every Woman.” This piece, along with her triptych “The Power of the Click” was subsequently shown at and exhibition at Galerie Art et Miss in Paris, in 2018.
Since, Lala Drona has travelled from the Eastern Asia, to Western Europe researching topics regarding transitions from the virtual to the real in various artist residency programs.
Artist Statement:
Lala Drona plays with the idea of the mirror and reflectivity, alternate realities, the transitions through these realities and how they manifest in our daily lives. "[The Internet] serves as a a mirror that reflects humanity in its entirety. However, like in a concave mirror; the image is magnified and hyperbolized. This makes certain aspects of our society more apparent, and with the storage of data, it also makes them quantifiable. The beauty and terror that we find online, are the beauties and terrors we find within ourselves.”
Refusing to choose just one medium, she paints, writes, and creates short films, all which take place in her artistic universe. The voyage from the synthetic to the real, and vice versa, play a significant role within her practice, and she represents these transition with her use of symmetry and grayscale. She re-contextualizes virtual media (stories, digital art, and videos) in reality through paint and canvas, tying everything together to create a cohesive and complex narrative.
(b. 1988, USA)