(Expanded) Paintings
What is Expanded Painting? Check out Lala Drona's blog exploring the field.
Androcentric Screams
Androcentric Screams is a series of paintings
exploring the silenced pain of women and non-binary individuals under androcentric medicine. Informed
by auto-ethnographic research and Elinor Cleghorn’s
book Unwell Women, it expresses the suffering of
those undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and disbelieved by
a male-centric medical system. Treating the canvas
as a medical body, I used practices like incising the canvas and wrapping it with hospital gowns and gauze before priming it for oil paint, symbolising healing and mirroring my own recovery. My condition, unilateral breast agenesis, led me to subvert modern feminine beauty ideals, characterised by non-resistance and smoothness, through utilising anti-smooth surfaces and highly textured oil paint. This project employs Art Brut techniques, characterised by their naïve style, to reject patriarchal Western beauty standards and capture the rawness of human experience. Its explicit nature provokes an abject confrontation between self and Other in the viewer, encouraging a reevaluation of the feminine abject and leading to a sublime experience of dangerous beauty.
Expanded Collage
Expanded Collage is a fine art interdisciplinary exploration of fragmentation, concealment, and the abject, utilising photo collage, oil paint on canvas, and video. This project aims to sublimate elements of the abject, rendering traditionally disturbing images more accessible and comprehensible through techniques such as pixelation, blurring, cutting, and reassembling. Following Julia Kristeva’s Theory of the Abject, the objective is to engage viewers with unsettling imagery, prompting a confrontation between one's identity and its potential dissolution, in order to facilitate transformative experiences.
I expanded the traditional collage technique, which consists of cutting up found printed material and reassembling it, through an interdisciplinary approach. This expansion transitioned from incorporating personal photos of my breast reconstruction blended with online sources, to integrating video screens, live cameras, and oil paintings, echoing Nam June Paik’s
TV Buddha.
This study utilises concealment methods such as pixelation, fragmentation, and blurriness to unveil transitional junctures. It investigates the continuous transformation of our bodies, beliefs, and perceptions within both physical and digital realms. By assembling diverse media together in the 'Expanded Collage' project (photo collage, paint on canvas, and video), it encapsulates our contemporary era of divided attention across multiple realities, situating individuals and their identities in perpetual transition.
Anthropology Series 2021-present

Through this series of paintings, Lala Drona delves into the void and 'monstrous womb,' a concept inspired by Barbara Creed's 'The Monstrous Feminine.' This series illuminates technology's absence, revealing customs' role in shaping culture.
The Void Series 2020-2021
After breast implant removal from a former reconstructive surgery, this collection by artist Lala Drona explores absence and mystery. Each canvas evokes vanished presence and uncertain futures, inviting a transformative journey of release and healing.
Power of the Click Series 2018
Lala Drona's 'The Power of the Click' delves into online and real-world interactions, dissecting digital clicks, approval dynamics, public forum ego, and gendered online presence.
The Breast Series 2012-present
The Breast Series, created in 2012-present, is Lala Drona's debut series of paintings. With radical honesty, she intertwines psychology in her work, revealing her personal narrative as a woman with unilateral breast agenesis. Through self-portraits, she reveals her secret and establishes a connection between art and audience.
Image: Royal, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 46cm x 40cm
Je suis la fin qui justifie les moyens 2015
'Je suis la fin qui justifie les moyens' is a triptych exploring trauma's transformative journey. Responding to the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, this series portrays resilience in three phases: acceptance, rejection, and ascension. Lala Drona, drawing from her own experience of accepting her body, intertwines her narrative into each facet. 'Ascension' represents reunification and transcendence, breaking free from trauma's shackles.
