After announcing her fourth album KiCk i back in March on an interview with Garage Magazine, Arca has now officially opened the doors to her new universe. Following the release of her mind-bending 62-minute-long single “@@@@@,” the Barcelona-based Venezuelan artist has shared the opening track from her upcoming album, “Nonbinary.”
Here, Arca goes off with a rhythmic half-rapped verse that reminds us of her Stretch 2 days, only that the message here is crystal clear: she’s not about to place herself into the binary presets society has created for us, and she’s not going to apologize for it. “I’m asking for recognition that we have multiple selves without denying that there’s a singular unit,” she told PAPER. “I want to be seen as an ecosystem of minor self-states without being stripped of the dignity of being a whole.”
Directed by Frederik Heyman, the “Nonbinary” music video is a futuristic piece of visual art that goes perfectly with the songs’ chrome-plated beats. Presented as an entity like the one shown on the “@@@@@” visuals (also directed by Heyman,) Arca looks stunning in every shot, be it when she’s pregnant in a space-age visit to the obstetrician or reenacting Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus. The video ends with a fight between two Arcas, who, even though they antagonize, perfectly coexist within the same being.
This particular scene was previewed in September 2019, when Arca shared a behind-the-scenes clip on her Instagram account. The clip’s audio has now been famously sampled by Rosalía on her Latin Grammys performance last year.
‘KiCk i’ is coming out later this year, and will feature guest spots from Björk, Rosalía, SOPHIE and Shygirl.