Rebirth is a rupture, an unavoidable collision.
Lala Drona is a Franco-American artist of Venezuelan heritage whose practice spans painting and video. She is currently based between Paris and London and is completing a Master’s in Painting at the Royal College of Art in London. She exhibits and publishes her work internationally.
Her paintings live in the frayed boundary between body and image, formed in the wake of surgical intervention. As a painter born with a congenital absence of one breast and shaped by the implantation and removal of a prosthesis, she uses the canvas to excavate the body’s memory. Textured surfaces evoke tactile immediacy; disembodied forms speak to alienation in an increasingly digital world. Working between wall and floor, she enacts a suspended state—between anesthesia and awakening. Her fingers rub, scrape, and score the surface, echoing the somatic rhythms of surgical procedures. Shifting styles and clashing materials mirror an age of excess and fragmentation, while smooth voids evoke the divine emptiness of the digital. Her canvases become the site of the cut—where collapse and partial recomposition forge a space of intentional ambiguity and potential.
Instagram: @laladronaofficial
Website: www.laladrona.com
Interviewed by Claire Zakiewicz
Claire – Now that you’re at the end of your Painting MA at the RCA, how do you feel your practice has evolved over the last year?
Lala – I didn’t come to RCA to fine-tune – I came to break something open. I’ve always had the kind of brain that jumps around – which is probably why I come from an interdisciplinary background — but my heart’s always belonged to painting. Coming into the RCA, I made a promise to myself: to strip everything back and focus purely on paint. Not performance, not video — just paint, on canvas, with all its constraints and possibilities. I wasn’t interested in tweaking what I’d done before; I wanted to completely rewire how I approach painting. And honestly? I did.
Claire – First of all, congratulations on such a brave and tenacious approach. It’s clearly led to huge creative breakthroughs and these epic paintings. I can imagine how intense – and at times difficult – that process must have been. How did the RCA’s environment — the tutors, the studios, the critical discourse — shape or challenge your approach to painting?
Lala – In the first term, I gave myself full permission to make ugly paintings. I needed to break out of old habits — move away from the polished, pleasing aesthetic I was used to, and push into something more unpredictable. The tutorials and artist talks were valuable, but what really shifted things was being immersed in this huge community – 150 painters, all with completely different ways of working, seeing, thinking. That constant exposure to other approaches challenged me more than anything. I kept experimenting until something finally gave. My studio mates had gone away for winter break, and I had one day – just one – with the whole space to myself. The floor was free, so I threw down some wrinkled canvas and started painting directly on it, throwing my body into it. It was the first time I made something abstract that I knew had potential. That moment opened something up – and from there, I began building the embodied practice I have now.
Before the RCA, I was painting representational figures – images that told a story about embodiment and identity, grounded in my own lived experience. I was born with a congenital condition where only one breast developed, and later underwent reconstructive surgeries that reshaped my body. But this year taught me how to put my actual body into the work – not just paint the image of one.
I filmed my surgeries and played those videos on loop in the studio. Watching the surgeons’ hands – the movements, the forms beneath the skin — all of it got imprinted in my mind. Those gestures made their way into my body, and then onto the canvas. That shift pulled me into something far more raw and otherworldly: these liminal, suspended spaces that sit somewhere between the physical and the digital.
My paintings now trace moments of collision – body with machine, violence with care, spirit with matter. I don’t resolve my paintings – and that’s the point. I realized I was painting the site of the cut: not a place of healing, not of pain, but something suspended, still open. That openness is where the new potential lives – not in closure, but in what’s still becoming.
Claire – Has your relationship to materials changed over the course of your MA?
Lala – Definitely. One of the most transformative parts was our philosophy sessions with Johnny Golding. They challenged us to zoom in – to focus on that encounter between tool, medium, and surface. It shifted my thinking: I’m not imposing something onto the painting. I’m in a conversation with it. When the dialogue’s missing – when the materials are being forced – it shows. I started to treat painting less like execution, and more like improvisation. That shift made the whole process more alive.
Claire – What have you found most emotionally challenging about doing an MA in painting?
Lala – Letting go. That was the hardest part. I came in with years of habits – planning, controlling, refining. But I knew I wanted a different kind of practice: something intuitive, unplanned, unfolding in real time. What I didn’t expect was how hard that would be. And ironically, even that kind of practice can become rigid if you’re too devoted to it. So I learned to hold both – the intentional and the instinctive. That balance made the work stronger, and the process way more sustainable.
Claire – How did you deal with burnout, doubt, or comparison during your time at RCA?
Lala – Being in a program with 150 painters is incredible – but it’s also like a live-action Instagram doom scroll. You see everyone’s work, their breakthroughs, the shows they’re getting into… and yeah, it’s easy to start spiralling. But here’s the thing: we’re all on different timelines, making different kinds of work, in a market that’s always shifting. I made peace with that early on.
I’m not chasing trends – I’d rather stay true to my expression and trust that the right opportunities will find me. And some did. I was in a group show at Beaconsfield Contemporary Art, and I was interviewed by Carrie Scott – both really meaningful experiences. But I also didn’t get any of the prizes I applied for. That’s just how it goes – you get some things, and some things you don’t.
I also kept reminding myself: your cohort is your community. If one of us is winning, we’re all winning. Their success is proof that it’s possible – and if it’s possible in your proximity, it’s already within reach.
Claire: That’s excellent advice and exactly how I got inspired to I apply to the Royal College of Art myself! How did you manage time and space between your studio work and your personal life?
Lala: I really recommend making at least one friend outside of RCA early on – someone completely outside the painting bubble. I went to a few random meetups in my first month, and ended up with a few friends that became lifelines when the RCA microcosm got intense. It’s important to have somewhere you can breathe.
Claire: Was there a piece of advice or feedback during the MA that really stayed with you – for better or worse?
Lala: When you get stuck on a painting, don’t ask yourself, “What should I do?” Instead ask the painting what it wants.
Claire: Ooh, I like that. What’s next for you, artistically or professionally, now that you’re finishing the MA?
Lala: We’ve still got two months left – but they’ll go fast. After that, I want to jump straight into developing my next body of work, and I think the best place to do that is in my studio in Paris. I’ll definitely still have a presence in London – I’ve built real friendships and roots here, and I want to stay connected. And it’s so close.
What I’m really looking forward to, though, is being alone in the studio again. We’ve spent almost a year creating in constant proximity – surrounded by each other’s work, feedback, presence. It’s been incredible, but also intense. I’m curious what happens when that all falls away. When no one’s watching. When the act of making becomes wild, intimate, and completely unfiltered again.
After everything we’ve absorbed this year, I think there’s something powerful waiting to come through in that kind of solitude. And I want to see what that is.
Claire: What advice would you give someone (like me!) just starting the RCA Painting MA this autumn?
Lala: First off – congrats, you’re in for a ride. My biggest advice? Show up. Be in the studio as much as you can (with the occasional mental health day). Be present during the degree show – split your time between people-watching and having real conversations by your work. You don’t have to be “on” all the time, but just being around (even just to absorb it all) matters more than you think.
Claire: Thank you Lala! Is there anything you wish you’d known at the start of the course?
Lala: It was like a paint tube squeezer – pressure from all directions, but if you stay with it, you get every last bit out of yourself.
Instagram: @laladronaofficial
Website: www.laladrona.com
