Claire Boucher, also professionally known as Grimes, was having her first fine-art show at the end of May. This famous pop star/musician/artist might have been recognized by many after she announced on Twitter, the name (X Æ A-12) of her baby she had with Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and the well-known electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla.
To most of her fans, Claire Boucher made her presence known by her music performances. Earlier in her career, after the debut of her first two well-known albums (Geidi Primes and Halfaxa) under the name Grimes, Claire started extensive touring beyond Montreal across North America that contributed to her success. However, she once spoke negatively about being a female musician in the industry she believes filled with sexism. Her experience as a musician was reflected in the overall darker tone of her later albums, Art Angel and Miss Anthropocene. In a recent podcast interview on residentadvisor.net podcasted on May 14th, Claire claimed that she wished her audiences would've known her for her art instead of her music because her voice was consistently misrepresented.
Before this art show, Claire had been creating a lot of visual arts for her albums. As you can see in her exhibit, there are elements of her past musical works mixed in. There is a separate Instagram account Claire created for her visual artworks as well as fan arts.
The main character, WarNymph, in the section The WarNymph: Scenes at the art exhibit, is, in fact, the new digital representation of Claire. In late 2018, to shelter herself from the complications brought about by the overwhelming media coverage, Claire opened a new twitter account with the name, Warnymph. She gave it a description of "Btw I am a digital baby. Any and all opinions are my own and not a reflection of any flesh humans."
One thing that makes this art exhibition of Claire exceptional is a section titled "Selling Out." This section contains a contract, Claire made in collaboration with her lawyer, that permits a one time purchase of a fraction of Grimes' soul. According to Bloomberg, the item was initially given a price of 10 million dollars by Claire to make sure no one buys it. However, Claire later felt that it wasn't appropriate to ask 10 million dollars during the pandemic when millions of people across the globe are suffering. This item is then set a price of “best offer” for others to decide how much it is worth.
Grimes' visual art show is available digitally on the Los Angeles Gallery Platform (May 28th through June 3rd) and Maccarone (May 28th through Aug 31st). They are both great places to check out arts online, take a look!