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…
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