ophelia Arc
Ophelia Arc @cease.and.perish
Ophelia would love for you to refer to her as insane, because she is. In the last two years I’ve known her, I think she’s taken two days off from work to celebrate her anniversary with her partner, Kevin. If you follow her on instagram, you’ll get a glimpse into her devotional practice, as she posts stories of when she “clocks in” and “clocks out” every morning and night. A ten hour day is light work for her, and labor is the name of her game. She is entrenched in the arduous work of crochet, natural dying, complex theory and writing, and an obsessive reflection of her history with institutionalization, severance from family, and militant feminism.
Ophelia has two eyebrow piercings, big black glasses, thick black hair, and a uniform of big boots, skirts and tights, and a tote bag with her crochet project of the day. She is not one to sit still, and she is often the subject of her inquiry. Her work in all its forms is representative of picking at a scab, she festers in her wounds, which are pits full of questions about the body, mind, and family.
Maybe it’s her commitment to her art that is so intimidating upon first glance, but Ophelia is perhaps one of the most gentle people you’ll meet. She is not in the least bit scary, though she’d rather me not share that. In fact, if you ever have the pleasure of going to her house for even a casual meeting, you will be met with offerings of cookies, wine and cheese platters, maybe even a whole roast or pasta dish. When she’s not locked in her studio, stewing in thought and grinding away at a pink amorphous part of her being, she is rushing to compile an array of confections for her friends she is unconditionally loyal to. She is a big softy under a thin hard shell, much like an egg that’s delicate and strong all at once.
You won’t find Ophelia watching movies or TV, instead you’ll find her computer packed with mind maps, downloaded Jstor papers, podcasts, and books. Every moment she is working she is multitasking. Like many of my friends from grad school, Ophelia’s work is the product of her inner world. Life is a big puzzle for her, and all the plot points of her life relate to each other like one big butterfly effect, and she intends on identifying them all. Her bodily structures are soft in form, pink and purple and lacy and gorgeous. But there is also her hair, her boots, her history, and her hands. Look closer and you will find objects of self sacrifice.
Ophelia gives you a window into her world far beyond an artist's obligation. Her work should be regarded as something beyond precious, because it is grotesquely personal. What she contributes to the conversation about womanhood, gestation, mother and daughter bonds, mental and physical entrapment, insanity, obsession, relationships to food and trauma, and all the rest I couldn’t possibly list cannot be absorbed without considering how much of her is within these bodies.
Her work is something that has to come out of her. Like vomit or a virus, she has no choice but to give into the world she’s created. It is more than a process of making, it is a process of worship. It is religious, cruel, and magnificent all at once. Her work is reflective of artists with staff and assistants, but I doubt I’ll ever see a day she accepts help in her artistic practice, apart from Kevin’s enlistment as art handler and steadfast support system. Her work is for anyone who has hurt, and as she says, she is her own mother. She’s named herself, made herself, and survived herself. She takes pride in her hyperindependence, but she doesn’t abandon love. She is an inspiration to me, and likely to anyone who meets her. You, the reader, will without a doubt find something beautiful in her, too. I’m happy to introduce you all to the wild, the psychotic, the stunning, Ophelia Arc.
Fun fact…
Ophelia has been doing the same yoga routine daily since 2020, a true queen of routine.
How did you come to find sculpture? Few people know you were a drawing major in undergrad, and though drawing still plays a huge role in your work, it is no longer primary. Tell us about that journey.
Sculpture for me came out of my contempt for how monotonous it became to make ruly work for other people. Like many others I lost my job during the pandemic (which I was only precariously balancing with college at the time). This had me make a hard pivot to the two things i was best at. Scamming men and drawing shit. I began to use my digital art as a talking point for men over the age of 35 and through some manipulative coercing I’d get them to commission a custom piece. Safe to say it got very old very fast and that’s when I realized that long term this was both unsustainable and helishly boring. I began to start to refer back to analog. Looking at my sketchbooks and seeing how these quick renderings could be birthed into physical space. The catalyst for this was an intro to 3d class that allowed us to work with any material and I instantly thought crochet would work best for its portability and its submission to work under my terms with the right amount of time and coercion. (much like those men now that I think about it)
What does pink mean to you?
For me pink is internal. It’s this innermost layer. The first thing that comes to mind when you ask is this video I saw way too young on YouTube. Teddy has an operation. In the video you see this narrator perform a pseudo operation on a teddy bear and his insides are pink. We are all pink inside. Pink is the type of color that lives on this fine line of delicate and grotesque, the color has allowed me to play within the paradox. To push and pull as I see fit.
TLDR pink to me means paradox
How do you experience love, how do you love others?
I think I experience love skeptically, nature nurture and the like has jaded me in a lot of ways but also protected me. Like a prey animal taking its time to become accustomed before accepting. The way I give love is similar. Slow start, skeptical and then devotionally committed. I used to be a long distance runner as a kid, love, much like long distance running requires an acute amount of pacing. Never starting off sprinting at first but rather slowly building momentum and once footing occurs, a rhythm is developed. It becomes consistent. That's how I feel I give love once a trust is established. That took time to develop though. Years ago I was very hot and cold. Giving all of me and withdrawing all of it or vice versa, overeager and then completely shut away. I've come to see the value in patience, the slow acuity.
What was the first piece you created that set you on the path to this work? Have you always been a devotional worker? If not, when did that change?
My Dearest Amanda
The first piece I created that truly set this whole thing off in this way was an installation sculpture I made in undergrad. I was working under A.K burns at the time who opened my eyes to the impossible limitations of what art could be. How time becomes a medium. The psychological space that a physical space can imbue (photo below of the piece) the piece was called My Dearest Amanda, and I surprisingly still stand by it. It was this large crochet piece I created with a chicken wire armature (that part makes me cringe for sure) and different flesh tones accumulated over time, patchworked around it. A video piece is projected onto it which consists of officiated letters from my mother. As the video progresses, the letters become darker and the light illuminating the sculpture in the center becomes brighter, the audio which accompanies it grows more chaotic, louder. I'm a certified digital hoarder and have all these voice memos left by family members, all the audio recordings of fights at home, all the voicemails left unanswered. I stitch them together, sectioning out parts, making them into a memoir, this unreliable drum of what I remember home being from a child's perspective. That whole project made me sick in a lot of ways. Something about editing audio like that for hours on end, and playing it while doing the physical labor of crochet is both masochistic yet necessary for the work. I now limit myself to audio/video work only when absolutely necessary, when it's screaming for me to incorporate it as opposed to having it be a fixture of my daily practice, because it would surely kill me.
In terms of devotion, I've always been devotional. Self sacrificial to a fault. The drive for it is some combination of catholicism, devotional suffering and obsessive compulsive disorder. Cross country was a sport, Scamming men was a sport. These stupid procreate drawings would record hours upon hours upon hours of labor, another sport. Learning anything became an act of consuming and baptising myself in it. The whole devotional quality in my personality has always been there, and as a kid it was definitely used in a self destructive way, not knowing where to put this potent need to sacrifice my being, but art has become the perfect outlet for that, thank god.
Tell us about your inspiration.
My inspiration is my insatiable need to fulfill what I'm curious about. Art is one of the few disciplines that allows you to be good at nothing and dabble in everything. I can jump from reading about parasitic symbiosis, to chaos theory, the lacanian psychoanalysis, to mystic saints to just learning about how yarn works. I can fall down rabbit holes and call it work. I can be obsessive and not implode
As artists, we are constantly investigating. How does epiphany play a role in your work, how does it redirect you? Do you hypothesize before beginning your searches or do you pick subject matter that you loosely wonder about? What does the very start of a project look like for you?
I love having a dumping ground, a digital garden from which to cultivate. Anything can go in there, line drawn sketches, random websites, a photo of a dead bug I found on the ground, from there I organize and tend to the garden. Some things inevitably die, or are weeds that don't do anything for a piece in the grand scheme of it, others become a part of this living ecosystem, nothing gets deleted. Ill sometimes see rather alarming shit i wrote at three in the morning and leave it there as a markator of my mental state. i look back over the months and months and months of these maps I've accumulated and notice patterns, those become the epiphanies, the key metaphors within the semblance of the whole.
Your first solo following graduation is coming up at the end of this month, which is a huge feat. What would your 17 year old self think about your work, both before and after leaving home?
It's surreal. Since I'm a serial documenter I've been able to go onto instagram and see what i was up to a year, two, three four up to five years to the day. Like any other angsty teen i kind of figured id be dead by now, or atleast thats what i thought when i was still living with my parents, hating my life etc. if i told my past self this she definitely wouldnt believe me, one because shed be surprised im still not over all this shit from when i was a kid, and two because someone other than myself actually cares enough to platform my inability to let things go. Life's crazy.
The Natal Lacuna
Ophelia’s solo show at Lyle’s and king running until August 2nd, 2025
Your work requires you to push yourself as far as you can go, in a world where you are given unlimited material, space, and time, what would your most ambitious piece look like?
I think of this a lot, I think of this probably once a week. My most ambitious project in terms of time and material would be a large scale house that people could enter, as they enter the house it would obviously become tattered and destroyed, and I'd come in every few days and mend its ravaged body slowly till it becomes more repair than house. A ship of theosis for the proto bod. It would be an insane project that I can't see anyone ever commissioning me for but that would definitely be my answer.
Do you find studying your wounds heals them as much as it does keep them open? As women, we are often told to “let go” of pains as a weapon of pacification. How is your art pushing against acceptable femininity and how does that influence the way you carry yourself? How has that changed your relationship to other women? What do you look for in your peers, no matter their gender identity?
I think it heals them on my own terms. At a certain point I know I'm beating the horse to a pulp but I think I like suffering to an extent. It brings me some sort of joy. To harm the thing and heal it. I feel like a mother. In terms of the letting go part, this is often said to women so their story doesn't become their own. It becomes a way to allow others to tell it for you or to bake you into their own subplots, to coopt it and contrast it into something that no longer belongs to you. I feel that by doing this I have fully proved the act of being in control, and maybe that's the only thing we ever get. I've noticed people tell me my work strikes a cord or makes them feel seen. I have all those screenshots in my phone under the album title “in case you want to die” all, the people that reach out are these young women and girls, i think there's something to that which i have yet to parse. Of course others have liked my work too but these a tad too personal dms come from people, other women i see parts of myself in. and that sort of carved out space for others to sit in with me feels like my pathetic attempt at community care or what have you. In terms of my relationship to other women, its definitely given me compassion. A lot of culture pits women against each other, villainizes us to one and other, it allows me to find compassion for the parts of myself i cringe at, the parts of my mom i wont forgive but can now attempt to understand. To recognize that we exist under these systems and that the systems we operate under can push us to do things we may not otherwise do.
In peers I look for this, that sense of respect. I think it's important not to act like we know why people do the things they do or behave in one way or another, but respect the choices they make for themselves within their circumstances. I look at the people I have surrounded myself with throughout the years and they are all strong willed, compassionate and more than anything, incredibly understanding
Growing up in a predominately White town as a Chilean and Peruvian girl must have added a layer of alienation from “home” just as the tense relationship with your family did. What did it feel like to move to New York where your experience is more visible? What does chosen family mean to you?
Oh it was actually really sick and fuxking twisted, haha. Within the latino community, especially with first generation latinos you begin to see a lot of internalized racism fester. My mom was very much in the camp of affirming her identity as an American before all else, how she was successful and this meant that she was better than relatives closer aligned with their hispanic roots. This in conjunction with going to school in my elementary years where the idea of being chilean or peruvian wasn't really conceived, i was often asked if I was Mexican, since at the time its the only spanish speaking country the district would ever care to talk about (we celebrated 5 de mayo at a place called tequila sunrise for fucks sake) what it was like crossing the border. Shit like that. As I got older in middle school and I began to finally see other latino kids but with this whole internal identity crisis at home, and falling into emo subcultures, which lets face it are very white washed within the western context, it definitely left me in a precarious place. My father is a Chilean immigrant and was very proud of that. He's still a Chilean citizen (last I heard) and made it a point to teach my brother and I Spanish alongside learning English. I'm grateful for that. I know a lot of parents with my mothers mentality push Spanish as far as they can, but my mom saw it as a good skill to drag out for employment opportunities or college in the future and to keep it hidden unless it was seen as beneficial. None of this mattered by high school though because at that point the white kids and the Brown kids wanted nothing to do with me because I had already been hospitalized and that stain of othering is the safest way to get you ostracized to both camps. That was certainly a contributing factor for why I graduated early, to get out of that small stupid town and just start my life with a completely clean slate. And then of course covid happened but luckily when i moved out i ended up living with a girl also going to my same college in a random online listing out in the bronx. She's Puerto rican and Mexican and I began to finally hear Spanish music playing while she manically cleaned the house or cooked some Hispanic food way too late at night. She's now my best friend. That definitely healed that neglected part of me in a lot of ways, allowed me access to a side of me I hadn't really seen a reason to attempt to access. As I got more into art and of course going to a public college in NYC, I started learning more about other artists who were hispanic, meeting kids in my classes who were hispanic and it has shifted the way i place myself within my cultural identity.
If you could describe your mind and soul as an object, what would it be? Is it possible to identify that complexity in an object?
hmmm. I am not sure I can attribute my soul to an object. I'd have to give that one more thought, but if I were to ascribe an object to my mind it would be my sketchbook. That's kind of a cop out answer but ive been keeping a sketchbook for years now rather religiously and looking back at each one I realize that I'm pondering the same shit. I have about 5 years worth of consistent sketchbooks, and three years worth of journaling from childhood that I'm staring at right now that are all dated and cataloged, I could honestly pick up any of those and easily see it being my mind. That or my blog, that place is really cooked.
Interview by Maren Curtis with Ophelia Arc
