is a Franco-American artist of Venezuelan heritage working between Paris and London. A graduate of the Royal College of Art (MA Painting), she has exhibited internationally, including her 2024 solo exhibition Virtual Reverence at Elios Gallery, Paris. Her practice explores the “Abject Feminine,” moving from the body’s exterior into its interior and affective states. Through visceral landscapes and totemic figures, her paintings evoke digital sensibilities, conjuring forms that are bodily yet uncanny, unstable, and in flux.

After reading about the notorious Lala Drona on the very factual celebrity blog Based on a Fact, where one can follow her meteoric rise from a haunted breast implant to an activist stance within the #freebritney campaign via a mirror-box painting, I felt more confused than ever.

As an aspiring young artist, I was curious to learn more about the Venezuelan-American painter who, according to the internet, has been making waves in the Parisian art scene since the 2010s—or at least appears to have been. Unlike most contemporary painters I’ve been referred to by teachers and peers, Lala had a suspiciously rich online presence. The more I searched, the more questions I had. Who was Lala, really? How did she become the painter she is today? And most importantly: what did a girl have to do to get in touch?

It turns out the last question was the easiest to answer. Step one: have a mutual friend. Step two: have them arrange a rendez-vous in Lala’s at-home studio.

Lala’s studio looked exactly how you would imagine a painter’s studio to look: paint, brushes, half-finished canvases leaning casually against the walls. It also had a cozy feel to it—made you want to sit and talk for hours—or maybe that’s just because there was a couch. I was eager to hear more about her practice, especially given that my own MFA in drawing has led me toward a protocol-based approach with surprising overlaps to hers (as I had previously discovered via a sponsored Instagram reel).

In my own work, I begin with runny, gestural marks that create a kind of skeletal structure for monotype, followed by layers of ink, oil, and pastel—what I like to call a dialogue with my unconscious mind. In the reel, Lala described something strikingly similar: large gestural layers of paint applied onto a canvas laid directly on the floor, later refined to bring forward certain forms.

A negotiation between instinct and control.

Naturally, I asked how she developed this approach. Her answer, much more compelling than mine, brought us right back to the haunted breast implant.

Years ago, she explained, upon discovering that her breast implant was haunted, she made the decision to have it removed (a breast explant, if you will). Following the procedure, she obtained footage of the surgery and began watching it obsessively—studying the layers of tendon, muscle, and fat until they were effectively imprinted into her visual memory. These textures and forms began to seep into her work, sparking a desire to engage the body more directly in the act of painting.

Influenced in part by the Gutai movement, in which artists reject traditional tools in favor of direct bodily engagement, Lala moved her canvas from the wall to the floor. Scaling up in size, she began using her entire body to produce large, sweeping gestures. The floor itself began to echo the position of a surgical table—a site of both action and vulnerability.

Through repeated layering, these gestures accumulate into something like an anatomical memory: forms that sometimes recall blood, tissue, or fluid, emerging from what she describes as the unconscious. At a later stage, she returns to the work for some conscious intervention, refining, removing, and emphasizing certain elements. The result is a large, visceral painting that stages an ongoing dialogue between layers of consciousness, body, and mind.

This back-and-forth does not end with the painting itself. Lala often revisits finished works through drawing, creating iterations and re-iterations that extend the conversation with her body.

I had to ask about her influences—had to understand the muses at play in her Lala Laboratory. She pointed to Julie Decornu’s Raw, as well as films associated with the New French Extremity, including Alexandre Aja’s High Tension (2003). Most significantly, she cited David Cronenberg, whose work consistently explores bodily mutation and transformation.

She described, almost fondly, the moment in The Fly when Seth Brundle begins to realize his body is becoming something other than human. This fascination with metamorphosis—watching the body betray itself—resonates strongly with her own work. It also explains her admiration for Crimes of the Future (2022), where the body becomes a site of continuous and public transformation.

It’s not surprising, given her origin story, that Lala is drawn to imagery others might find grotesque. And yet, the appeal is familiar. I find myself equally captivated by Cronenberg’s films—uneasy, yet completely engrossed, unable to look away. There is something compelling about encountering the icky from a safe distance. Perhaps this is what I find myself drawn to in Lala’s work. It may also explain something about my own. Now may be the time to mention that all my drawings are saturated in red in a way that on the surface recalls blood and gore, hovering somewhere between abstraction and something more visceral—something that, under different circumstances, might be difficult to confront directly.

I never did find out Lala’s real name. But I did leave with something better: a clearer understanding of how her work operates, both materially and mythologically—beyond the tabloids and the paparazzi. Plus, of the three questions I arrived with, at least two were answered. Maybe someday I’ll ask our mutual friend for her name.

SIENNA PAQUAY is a Paris-based artist from Montreal working in contemporary drawing and performance. Her practice explores the intersection of meditation, hypnosis, and automatism, translating altered states of consciousness into gestural marks using pigments, pastel, and oil stick. She builds layered compositions where forms are repeatedly reworked and re-iterated, shifting between intuitive gesture and controlled intervention.