History has a rich list of artist-poets, featuring such luminaries as William Blake, Victor Hugo, and Sylvia Plath, whose practices are distinguished by how the two disciplines relate. For Ark Heads, whose second solo show, return | return‘Everything Begins with Poetry’ is being held alongside this year’s Biennale Arte in a 17th-century sacristy on Venice’s Grand Canal.
Until her first exhibition in London last year, Ark was better known as a poet – a literary form she values for its ability to ‘connect time and space’. Born in Saint Petersburg, her father was assassinated when she was eight, and her family fled Russia to London where they changed their names, their nationality and their language. It wasn’t easy, and Arch recalls how, at school, she would ‘run off to the library and read Byron’ – which romanticized her isolation in early 19th-century exile from England. In 2018, working in politics and experiencing the breakdown of her marriage, Arch began posting pieces of her own poetry on Instagram. She quickly gained a following in the hundreds of thousands, and has since published six volumes, covering love as well as lofty philosophical ideas. In 2021 she sold her fourth book, Arcadiaat Christie’s New York as an NFT for over half a million dollars (making Ark the highest paid poet in the world).
