New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Photo: atp_tyreseus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tisch_School_of_the_Arts_NYU.jpg)
College/University
Gallery of Arca (Alejandra Ghersi)
New York University. Photo: Jonathan71, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NYU07.JPG)
New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Photo: atp_tyreseus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tisch_School_of_the_Arts_NYU.jpg)
Alejandra Ghersi, known professionally as Arca, is a Venezuelan musician, record producer, composer, DJ, singer, painter, and performance artist. Her career combines experimental electronic music, pop, reggaetón, visual art, and technology, with major collaborations involving Kanye West, FKA twigs, Björk, Rosalía, and Sia.
Background
Alejandra Ghersi was born on October 14, 1989, in Caracas, Venezuela. Her family moved to Darien, Connecticut, during her preschool years and returned to Caracas when she was about nine. Her father worked in investment banking, and her mother studied international relations. Ghersi grew up between Venezuelan and North American cultural environments and received piano lessons during a materially privileged childhood.
As a teenager in Caracas, Ghersi developed an interest in electronic music, digital imagery, and experimental sound. She initially released music under the name Nuuro before adopting Arca as her principal artistic identity. Her early work explored distorted rhythm, voice processing, and electronic textures while she was also negotiating questions of sexuality and gender.
Education
Ghersi attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and studied at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. The institute, established within NYU's professional arts environment, combines music production, recording technology, composition, performance, and the business of recorded music. Her move to New York placed her in a city with a significant club, hip-hop, and experimental music culture, which became an important setting for the development of her artistic practice.
Her education connected formal training in recorded music with self-directed experimentation in electronic production. The combination of technical recording knowledge, composition, performance, and visual practice later characterized her work as Arca.
Ghersi began releasing music under the name Nuuro before emerging professionally as Arca. In 2012 she released the EPs Barón Libre, Stretch 1, and Stretch 2 through the New York label Uno Nyc. Her 2013 mixtape &&&&& and the accompanying audiovisual performance with Jesse Kanda at MoMA PS1 established the multimedia character of her developing practice.
In 2013 she contributed production and consulting to Kanye West's album Yeezus and produced material for FKA twigs's EP2. These projects placed her within a group of producers reshaping the sound of experimental pop, hip-hop, and electronic music. Her debut studio album, Xen, was released by Mute Records in 2014, followed by Mutant in 2015.
Ghersi co-produced seven tracks and co-wrote two songs on Björk's 2015 album Vulnicura. She later contributed substantially to Björk's Utopia, while continuing her own recording career with Arca in 2017 and the mixtapes Entrañas and @@@@@. Her work combines sound design, composition, vocal performance, production, and visual imagery rather than treating them as separate disciplines.
In 2020 she released KiCk i, the first installment of a five-album sequence completed in 2021 with KICK ii, KicK iii, kick iiii, and kiCK iiiii. The series incorporated club music, reggaetón, pop, ambient music, and experimental electronic production, with collaborations including Björk, Rosalía, Shygirl, SOPHIE, and Sia. In 2026 XL Recordings released XXXXX, a sixteen-track studio album that continued her exploration of electronic sound, embodiment, transformation, and self-invention. Ghersi has been based in Barcelona in the later period of her career and has also worked across painting, performance, video, and digital art.
Achievements
Ghersi contributed production and consulting to Kanye West's Yeezus and production to FKA twigs's EP2, helping establish her reputation as an innovative producer in experimental hip-hop and electronic pop.
She co-produced seven tracks and co-wrote two songs on Björk's Vulnicura, then contributed production to Björk's Utopia.
Her albums and multimedia performances have combined experimental electronic composition, vocal performance, visual art, digital imagery, and live presentation into an integrated artistic practice.
The five-album KiCk sequence, released from 2020 to 2021, expanded her use of reggaetón, club music, pop, ambient music, and experimental sound design.
(A long-form electronic mixtape released before the KiCk s...)
2020
Views
Ghersi's artistic philosophy treats identity as mutable rather than fixed and uses sound, performance, and visual transformation to challenge conventional boundaries between body, machine, gender, and genre. Her work repeatedly presents experimentation as a means of creating space for forms of selfhood that do not fit established categories.
Her music and visual art also connect vulnerability with technological abstraction. Distorted voices, synthetic textures, theatrical bodies, and digitally mediated environments function as artistic tools through which she examines intimacy, pleasure, fear, transition, and self-invention.
Personality
Ghersi has described her artistic work as a way to explore identity, transformation, sexuality, and embodiment. Her public artistic practice is characterized by an intentionally fluid relationship between music, performance, visual art, and technology.
Interests
Painting, performance art, digital imagery, video, fashion, and technology.
Artists
Björk and SOPHIE are documented artistic influences and collaborators.
Music & Bands
Experimental electronic music, reggaetón, pop, ambient music, hip-hop, noise, and club music.
Connections
Ghersi has maintained significant creative collaborations with Jesse Kanda, who contributed visual work to the audiovisual presentation of &&&&&. Her production and songwriting relationships include Kanye West, FKA twigs, Björk, Rosalía, SOPHIE, Shygirl, and Sia.
Father:
Henrique Ghersi Rossón
An investment banker associated with Venezuela's financial sector.
References
The Fader interview with Arca
Documents Ghersi's childhood between Caracas and Connecticut, education at New York University's Clive Davis Institute, and early development as Arca.
2012
The Guardian profile of Arca
Discusses Ghersi's early career, collaborations with Kanye West and Björk, and the artistic development surrounding the album Arca.
2017
AllMusic biography of Arca
Provides an overview of Ghersi's career as a musician, producer, visual artist, and collaborator, including her principal albums and production work.
