M HKA Ensembles

° 1961

Born in Caracas (VE), lives in Antwerp (BE).

Carla Arocha (°1961, Caracas, Venezuela) has been living in Antwerp with her husband Luc Tuymans for many years now. She has been working with Stéphane Schraenen since 2005. With Schraenen, Arocha created work poised at the narrow edge of art, design and environment. Together they exhibit worldwide.

Before she began her career as an artist, Arocha studied biology at the St. Xavier University in Chicago. The scientific experience left significant traces in Arocha's interests as an artist: her work is characterised by an awareness for nature and human behaviour, especially with regards to perception. Traces of modernist and abstract-constructivist traditions in Venezuela and Chicago, as well as in art and kinetic art are also found in her work - traditions through which she was both formed and that she uses as dialogue.

Arocha often creates her work with an intent to register what characterises our way of looking at it. With the help of light and light effects like colour, reflection and transparency, she stimulates the eyes of the spectator and investigates our way of visualising. Arocha was trained as a painter, also in Chicago. Arocha's carefully executed installations, works with paper, as well as paintings, show a deep respect for the formal appearance of artworks, as well as a fascination for the elegance of optical effects.