‘Over the past few years, I've been on a huge healing journey, and have had to really learn how to use and how to live in my body again. It’s been incredibly humbling and amazing, and I'm lucky enough to have met a lot of people around the world who have such knowledge of the body through somatic healing techniques and structures and movement – abstract ways that we can explore ourselves.’
To coincide with her first single release in four years, ahead of her new album, Eusexua, FKA Twigs is drawing on her years spent studying movement practice to present a durational artwork,The Eleven, performed at Sotheby’s in London over a two-week period. It marks a new direction for the auction house, which is presenting an artwork unlike anything else it has shown in its 280-year history, with the free, unticketed event open to all.
Developed by the artist over many months, The Eleven features a cast of movers who perform physical ‘mantras’ in a tangible expression of connectivity and healing. It is named after the 11 aspects FKA Twigs has cited as crucial for wellbeing, with each one renamed by her in distinctive style: intake (intake), keychain (company), crone (relationship to technology), minestate (self-awareness and personal opinion of oneself), shaping (environment), the art of sol (simplicity), looping (artistic creation), opus (self-expression), truth (the truth and spirituality, eusexua body (movement) and primal revelation (nature).
‘I was speaking with the amazing movers yesterday, and I said the feeling of these movements should be – do you remember when you were a child and flowers were at the height of your pet? Do you remember when our eyes were so small that a flower was bigger than your eye, and what it felt like to gaze into it? That's how I want to feel about my body, and that's how I want to feel about the wonders in my life. So I developed the 11 different pillars in my life that I feel that if I don't mind, they can become out of control.’
The performance is accompanied by an amalgamation of techno and experimental electronic music performed by Matteo Chiarenza-Santini, who has also worked with FKA Twigs on her album. As well as the performance itself, FKA Twigs’ process is on display, in her personal sketchbooks and polaroids, as well as 14 large-scale photographs taken by her partner, photographer and film director Jordan Hemingway.
Timed to debut at the same time as her new music, the performance encompasses the guiding force behind her new album. What is ‘Eusexua’? ‘Eusexua is the thing that makes me feel alive. A moment of pure clarity when everything moves out of the way, everything is completely blank, and your mind is elevated,’ says FKA Twigs, adding that it is the moment directly before inspiration, or orgasm. It is a state through which she has lived as she created the 11 pillars. It extended to the way she dressed, choosing for a year to wear only simple, blue clothes created by friend and collaborator Yaz XL, and developed with designer Camille Liu, allowing her to focus inwards.
The Eleven by FKA Twigs, sketchbook
How did she come up with the name? ‘I was sitting at my kitchen table with my partner, Jordan, and I think it was quite late, and I think we were just gripping onto the word. I think I was trying to describe what I'd experienced in Prague [the energy of the clubs while filming The Crow], and I just kept on saying lots of different variations of the word. And it's funny, because at home, we have lots of pieces of paper with Eusexua spelt in different ways and pronounced in different ways, and it's kind of a jigsaw puzzle of the word. But then when we landed on it, it just felt right. I told somebody at the time that I was working with very closely – I called him up and I said, “I've got it. The album's called Eusexua.” He said to me, “You need to be really careful, because on streaming platforms, it's easier if people know the word, because people can accidentally get to yours and you get more accidental hits that way.” And I was just like, “Wow. Wow. Wow.” And in that moment – I knew that I couldn't work with that person anymore – I was going to have to find the strength and the tenacity of women like Marina [Abramovic] and Madonna and Tracey [Emin] just to keep going and follow through.’
The Eleven by FKA Twigs, from 14 - 26 September 2024. Times: 10am-4.30pm weekdays; 1-4.30pm weekends at Sotheby’s, 34–35 New Bond Street, London W1S 2RP
The Eleven will be livestreamed from Sotheby’s galleries for the entire duration of the exhibition. Viewers can watch via fkatwi.gs or sothebys.com/FKATwigs
The Eleven by FKA Twigs, polaroid
-
Designer Marta de la Rica’s elegant Madrid studio is full of perfectly-pitched contradictionsThe studio, or ‘the laboratory’ as de la Rica and her team call it, plays with colour, texture and scale in eminently rewarding ways
-
‘Nothing just because it’s beautiful’: Performance artist Marina Abramović on turning her hand to furniture designMarina Abramović has no qualms about describing her segue into design as a ‘domestication’. But, argues the ‘grandmother of performance art’ as she unveils a collection of chairs, something doesn’t have to be provocative to be meaningful
-
A local’s guide to Los Angeles by defiant artist Fawn RogersOregon-born, LA-based artist Fawn Rogers gives us a personal tour of her adopted city as it hosts its sixth edition of Frieze
-
'We need to be constantly reminded of our similarities' – Jonathan Baldock challenges the patriarchal roots of a former Roman temple in LondonThrough use of ceramics and textiles, British artist Jonathan Baldock creates a magical and immersive exhibition at ‘0.1%’ at London's Mithraum Bloomberg Space
-
Discover Rotimi Fani-Kayode's fluid photographs of the queer male body, on show in London‘Rotimi-Fani Kayode: The Studio – Staging Desire’ at Autograph ABP celebrates the work of the Nigerian-born photographer
-
Saatchi Gallery is in full bloom with floral works from Vivienne Westwood, Marimekko, Buccellati and more‘Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture’ at Saatchi Gallery, London, explores the relationship between creatives and their floral muses, and spans from fashion and jewellery to tattoos
-
'I want to get into these images and perfume them': Linder's retrospective opens at the Hayward Gallery'Linder: Danger Came Smiling' gathers fifty years of the artist's work at the Hayward Gallery. We meet the punk provocateur ahead of her first retrospective
-
Tasneem Sarkez's heady mix of kitsch, Arabic and Americana hits LondonArtist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references for her debut solo show, 'White-Knuckle' at Rose Easton
-
‘A call to action for more authentic expressions of working-class life’: a London show reframes working-class BritainLondon exhibition ‘Lives Less Ordinary’, at Two Temple Place, challenges age-old stereotypes
-
‘Dr Tetris’ on the biggest ever iteration of the puzzle in LondonTetris comes to 360-degree, 23,000 sq ft, 16k LED screens in London; Craig McLean speaks to Henk Rogers, the man who’s kept the game alive
-
‘Art speaks to the world around us’: Victoria Beckham’s 10 favourite artworks go on show ahead of Sotheby’s auctionWorks by Victoria Beckham’s favourite artists go on show at her Dover Street, London store, before they are offered across Sotheby’s upcoming contemporary auctions in New York and London or sold privately
