LALALALALALALALA

Corinna La (b. 1993, Edmonton, Canada) is a New York City–based artist and founder of Lalalalalalalala Studio. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design. With over a decade of experience in luxury fashion design at Calvin Klein under Raf Simons and Thom Browne, her practice explores the relationship between materiality, structure, and form, bringing the techniques and sensibilities of couture into a contemporary sculptural language.

Inspired by the intersection of natural and urban landscapes, La draws attention to the overlooked textures and details of everyday life, transforming the mundane into intricate, handcrafted and embroidered sculptural forms.

Her work explores the emotional landscapes of home, memory, and belonging, revealing the personal narratives embedded within ordinary objects, familiar environments, and shared experiences. These explorations reflect the complexities of belonging, navigating the tensions between familiarity and displacement, connection and distance, and the ongoing search for one's place in the world.

Referencing the familiar adage “The World Is Your Oyster,” this sculpture examines the tension between optimism and the realities that shape our access to opportunity. While the phrase suggests a world of limitless possibility, the ability to realize that potential is often contingent on forces beyond individual control, including class, race, gender, and social status. The oyster becomes a symbol of both possibility and limitation, prompting the question: the world is your oyster, but is it really?

The sculpture's construction references the papasan chair, a familiar fixture of the artist's childhood. Its deep, enveloping form offered a place to curl up, feel small and secure, and dream of the possibilities ahead. Yet the chair's delicate balance meant that leaning too far in either direction could send it tipping from its stand. This childhood memory of comfort interrupted by instability becomes an underlying metaphor for the precariousness of possibility: the freedom to imagine a future, tempered by the conditions that can limit or destabilize it.

Developed through draping, patternmaking, and sewing, the embroidered shell is meticulously fitted to its underlying steel rod framework using couture hand-sewing techniques. The exterior is densely embroidered with sequins and seed beads, recreating the irregular, highly textured surface of an oyster shell. Inside, a quilted, pillow-like form is embellished with cut-bead embroidery, creating a smoother surface that evokes the softness and familiarity of domestic comfort. The sequins and beads are hand-dyed to match a palette of over 300 colors drawn from the artist's watercolor paintings. This intricate process reveals a complex interplay of color, texture, and technique.

At the heart of the sculpture is an absent pearl. Rather than depicting the pearl as a hidden object of value waiting to be discovered, its absence becomes a gesture of self-representation: the artist herself is the pearl. This absence challenges conventional notions of worth and potential, questioning whether value must be discovered or validated by others to exist. Balancing humor with critical reflection, the sculpture considers what it means to imagine and construct one's own possibilities within a world where opportunity is never equally distributed.