about Lala
Lala Drona is an expanded painter who explores themes in the abject feminine.
Artist Bio
Lala Drona is a painter, born in Denver, Colorado. She is currently pursuing an Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art in London. Lala Drona publishes and exhibits her work internationally, with her most recent exhibitions presenting videos and paintings that explore digital spaces and the female gaze at the Cité des Arts de Paris. Her body of work—including painting in the expanded field, videos, and writing—delves into themes of the abject feminine, womxn's medical experience, and the void of the digital world. Her art exists within a fictional universe and mythology that she establishes
online, then recontextualizes in the physical world through painting, performance, and sculpture. Drona's work challenges viewers to consider the impact of institutional structures on individual identity.
Past exhibitions and artist talks with...
ABOUT THE WORK
Artist Statement
In a body, yet removed—into the slippage: the digital, the haze of a dream, and fragments of memory from an unknown time or place.
Rebirth is a rupture, an unavoidable collision.
My paintings are the final cry of humanity’s diminishing physical experience, as connections to the body and its sensations weaken in an increasingly digital and violent world. The textured surfaces evoke a visceral quality, with disembodied forms haunted by isolation, each transformed into uncanny figures.
My process merges digital repetition with the physicality of sensation: working on both wall and floor, I use my fingers to rub, scratch, and spread the paint, leaving traces that reveal underlying layers and create a tension between the mechanical and the tactile.
The digital influence is evident in my sequential addition of figures to the composition, where information accumulates like the copy-paste function of a keyboard—each figure’s lack of interaction reflecting our fragmented experience of life in the post-digital era.
Through a wide range of styles, mediums, marks, and textures, I reflect a contemporary world defined by excess and disorder. This is contrasted by the use of gradated backgrounds, which evoke the online world—a space where softening removes information, and where the more unknown, resides the more divine.
Through visceral textures and haunting imagery, these paintings invite viewers to reflect on the disintegration of the physical world, conveying both mourning and an unrelenting drive for rebirth.
Artist CV
LALA DRONA
Solo Exhibitions
April 2024 Solo Exhibition, "Virtual Reverence", Elios Gallery, Paris
February 2019 Solo Exhibition: The Box, Konstepidemin, Gothenburg Sweden
July 2018 Solo Exhibition: The Power of the Click, Cultural Center Castilblanco, Seville Spain
December 2014 Solo exhibition: From the Bed to the Lab, Duo Gallery (changed to T2 Gallery), Paris France
Collective Exhibitions
December 2024 Collective Exhibition, "Fall," Beaconsfield Contemporary Gallery, London
May 2023 Collective Exhibition, "Proclaim Your Rights", painting, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
July 2022 Collective exhibition, "Video + Performance," Millennium Film Workshop Inc., Brooklyn New York
March 2022 Collective exhibition, "Entre exode, ouverture et création," Powerhouse, Lausanne Switzerland
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
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
October 2016 Collective Exhibition: Narcisse Obligé, Savonette Electrique, Montrueil France
October 2015 Collective exhibition:
Je Suis..., La Maison des Ensembles, Paris France
Speaking Engagements
Jan 2025 Artist Talk "A Recent Present" by Lala Drona, University of Creative Arts Farnham UK
Jan 2025 Artist Talk "A Recent Present" by Lala Drona, Royal College or Art London
May 2023 Artist Talk "The Monstrous Feminine in Cinema and Fine Art" by Lala Drona, Soho House NYC
May 2021
Guest Panelist, "Viral/Sustainable: digital and environmental art today," Edinburg College of Art
Education & Research
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-July 2019 Artist in Residence, Kintai Arts, Kintai Lithuania
Jan-Feb 2019 Artist in Residence, Konstepidemin, Gothenburg Sweeden
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 2006 - May 2012 Bachelor of Arts University of Colorado at Boulder (Colorado, USA)
American Association of University Women Scholarship recipient
Awards/Publications
Aug 2024 Shortlisted Emerging Women Artist Award: 2024 Summer Edition, featured in print publication
2024 Soho House International Artist Fellowship Recipient
June 2024 Popout Zine, Issue: Tribe, publication of painting "The Womb"
Sept 2023 The Oxford Handbook of LGBTI Law, cover design is painting "Proclaim" by Lala Drona
Aug 2023 La Revue no°2 by Espace Artistes Femmes Magazine, Article "There are no great young artists,"by Lala Drona
March 2022
Dream House: A Collaborative Zine in Honor of the 50th, Anniversary of Womanhouse
Oct 2019 Post(blank),Vol. IV: Post(stranger) Paintings
June 2019
Marietta Magazine Issue 2: Interview by Erica Schreiner and images of paintings
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
Press
June 2024 Featured Interview, "Women in art – a sexist history to be rewritten" by Nathalie Koskinen
May 2024 Interview, Lala Drona on City of Muses Podcast, Paris
Underground Radio
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
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, Exhibition: "The Box"
July 2018
El Correo deAndalucia, Article on exhibition: The Power of the Click
July 2018
ABCdesevilla, Article on exhibition : The Power of the Click
May 2017 Public Radio Interview: 93.3 Beijing International Radio, Beijing China
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
Relocated to London for Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art