What are the male and female gaze, and why are they so important to art history? On Tuesday August 13th, The Art Gorgeous published an article exploring just that. The article titled “Three fresh takes on the female gaze” by Katya Lopatko featured three artists which “are embracing and extending the female gaze, shaping the future of the art world with each stroke”(Lopatko).
Title: Speak or Listen, Acrylic on canvas 50cm x 60cm
Last week, Lala Drona brought down the house with her debut performance in French at Le Castel, a private club located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
Le Castel was founded by the French event coordinator, Jean Castel in 1962. Many knew Jean Castel as “le roi des nuits parisiennes” (the king of Parisian nights), Private performances, artist-types and parties continue to roll through this institution today. In the basement of the building, there are sofas and chairs surrounding a stage. On the stage last week, the painting titled “Speak of Listen” by Lala Drona was displayed. Performance artist Wenjue Zhang, placed black boxes containing peep-holes around the room. Inside said boxes, lied an image, erotic and explicit…saturated in colour. Hypnotic music began to play in the background, and Lala Drona stepped onto the stage… (video below).
Lala Drona’s performance titled “Experiment 88: Speak or Listen” recounts an artist’s (Jade Edwards’) experience in Lala Laboratories. The artist is the subject in an experiment that will result in artistic revelation (article continues below):
still from performance at Le Castel
Sources say that this performance serves as an advertisement for the new Lala Laboratory. Since 2014, Lala has had quite a bit of trouble due to her unconventional inspiration extraction methods from muses. She has gone to Art Prison, inspired muse protests and strikes, and inadvertently caused changes in muse rights legislature. After the Lala Laboratory explosion in 2016, Lala Drona has simultaneously been looking for a place to put down roots, whilst also dodging investigations into inhumane Lala Laboratory experiments.
still from performance at Le Castel
Since 2017, Lala Drona has been traveling the world in the form of an exhibition tour. She stated last week, “I’ve been traveling in order to look for a new place for Lala Laboratories. And finally, I’ve found it.” Lala Laboratories, formerly “The Lala Laboratory” had to change its name due to copyright issues, but according to Lala, that wasn’t the only change that took place. “Lala Laboratories no longer includes muses in their research and experiments. After the protests, the project got a bad rap. It was almost impossible to get anything done due to new bureaucracy and protections. Now, thanks to the former muse experiments, we’ve collected all the data that we need, and it’s time to open our experiments to their proper demographic. Now, Lala Laboratories serves to enhance artist inspiration and methods, through experiences catered to each individual artist. The performance at Le Castel was a simulation of that…sort of an advertisement for the new laboratory, if you will.”
When questioned about the location of Lala
Laboratories, Lala explained: “It took going all over the world, and
encountering every problem imaginable to get to the solution. Lala Laboratories has installed itself in the
intangible: in the virtual spaces online, in every conversation, and in every collaboration
and project connecting to us. If you
have interacted with myself, my Drones, muses, and my community in any way, you
ARE part of Lala Laboratories.”
Lala Drona in her first ever public radio appearance on Beijing International Radio. Listen to her interview on Touch Beijing 93.2FM, where she explains what it means to be a visual artist today, and how Beijing has inspired her art. Stay tuned until the end where she reveals her plot for the future.
For those of you who desire a bit of consolidation of last year’s news: The Lala World Recap 2014.
The city of lights has not been kind to Lala. Arrested for spray painting the city walls and landing in urgent care are just a few of Lala Drona’s mishaps since her arrival.
Lala Drona in urgent care.
Lady Paris seems to have made Lala Drona harder, and the struggle has awakened her darker tendencies. The year 2014 marks the year of transition, when Lala assumes her title of “art villain.”
On various occasions, Lala has compared her artistic process to theft. “I steal others ideas because I don’t have my own” (2014 Art Prison Interview, L.D. Times Magazine). However, Lala pushed her artistic process an inch too far at an annual Paris “Perve Grandma Convention,” where she attempted to steal a Fred Le Chevalier piece from his oldest fan.
And Lala did not stop there. Later on that year, she allegedly stole thousands of dollars from desperate YouTube insomniacs who had fallen victim to her fake sleep hypnosis video. Although the media seemed to focus on Lala’s dark side, BOAF attempted to show the human behind the artist as well.
On April 24th, Lala traveled back to her home town Denver, Colorado in order to finalize preparations for a long-awaited hand transplant. Comments filled message boards questioning the authenticity (and humanity) behind the art pieces created since Lala’s mechanical hand acquisition.
Lala caught on the streets of Paris wearing a splint.
How would the prosthetic affect her paintings and would it cramp her hand dancing style? Before leaving Denver, Lala put on a spontaneous showing of her “Pre-Lala” work in an exclusive at-home art garage sale.
Along with the art garage sale last year, Lala committed other acts that were difficult to understand. In 2014, Lala’s face appeared twice in the subway station. The first was in Paris. She appeared holding an apple in a
Translation: The #1 extramarital dating site made by women./ Dare. Bite. Taste.
Geeden advertisement for adulterous online-dating (Lala later painted this experience). Next the artist appeared in a Berlin subway station, pants down in public. While the Geeden advertisement left fans wondering if Lala had sold out, the no-pants Berlin display just left them confused.
Other stunts this year were much easier to understand. To prove she isn’t all bad, Lala showed her support in adopting mutant bees in Paris. Her videos went viral in France when she took to the streets and battled against censorship with her “Don’t Retouch This” campaign. The artist “pulled a Banksy” when she sold originals of her artwork cheaply on the streets of Paris at the same time as galleries sold her work for thousands at the FIAC. She even had a little fun as she was seen shopping and drinking champagne at Paris’ 2014 Vogue Fashion Night Out.
However, it wasn’t all fun and games last year. In 2014, Lala launched the construction of her Warholian dream: The Lala Laboratory. During the construction, tensions in art politics were at a high. Muses were on strike and Lala’s unorthodox muse practices were thrown into the light.
Journalists infiltrated what is thought to be the Lala Laboratory and discovered a Muse Sweatshop. In an attempt to evade the Art Guild (the authorities), Lala invited journalists to a fake Lala Laboratory tour. The police were called, and Lala Drona was arrested on the spot for trespassing.
The board members of the Art Guild found Lala guilty of Muse Abuse and Torture in the first degree and she was sentenced to spend one month in Paris Art Prison. In prison, Lala Drona gave an interview, revealing for the first time ever, the method behind her madness. Upon her release, a masked man broke into the prison mail room and stole Lala’s prison letters written to Shutupi. The unknown man published the letters, revealing perhaps more than Lala would have liked regarding her feelings towards the Art Guild.
Out of jail and straight to work, the artist began preparations for her anticipated exhibition. After one small exhibition in May 2013 on arrival in Paris, one year later, Lala landed a place on the walls of Düo Gallery. The exhibition titled From the Bed to the Lab presented a retrospective look on her paintings created in Paris, all connected by the theme of the bed.
Photography and text by Richard Beban from Paris Play.
The three series exhibited were the Breast Series: a confrontation with a difficult past/ the bed a place of healing. The Sexe Sans Sex Series: a series of wanderings, and an analysis of her outside world/ the bed a place of experimentation. The Lala World Series: Lala’s new series, where she commits to painting the Lala World (the fictionalized articles found on Based on a Fact) in order to move freely between the virtual and the real, and create her own world/ the bed a place of dreams–and her dream: The Lala Lab.
Following a successful exhibition of her world, Lala plans to continue following her dark path. She’s back to her old methods of abuse and torture in order to extract inspiration from her muses and has marked the beginning of 2015 with the banishment of her beloved Drone #1. Only time will tell what’s to come of Lala and her Drones, Muses and Laboratory…
Last night before Paris’ Nuit Blanche (an artistic event that lasts all night once a year) Lala Drona posted a behind the scenes look at the preparation for her performance “Don’t Retouch This.”
Internet Drones everywhere started buzzing and met up with Lala later that night for the debut of the artistic campaign. She was spotted around Paris asking passer-byes to hold a sign saying “don’t retouch this” over a part of their body they didn’t think was perfect. The idea was to denounce the unobtainable ideal of perfection the media sells…and to accept ourselves the way we are.
Critics noticed that Lala held the sign in front of her chest almost the entire night. “Lala has been struggling with the idea of perfection in our society since her breast reconstruction. This is a part of her journey to self-acceptance,” states Kit Feller, New York art critic.
Onlookers were surprised and animated by the performance. “I want to do this with my friends,” said Florence Sibot, an onlooker at the Nuit Blanche. “I think she is might be starting a movement here.” Since last night’s performance, 20 documented #dontretouchthis videos have been published online. A good start for the campaign.
Based On A Fact 
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