Untitled, c.1930-70

In the early 1930s, Paulina Peavy began participating in weekly séances in Los Angeles, where she first claims to have encountered a spirit entity named Lacamo. She recalled its appearance as “a great cloud and fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about itself, the color of amber.” Peavy credited this nonhuman, formless being as her career-long collaborator, fully naming and crediting Lacamo in her first solo exhibition in New York. To activate her various artistic practices powered by the beyond, Peavy would enter into a deep trance and “merge” with Lacamo, channeling the occult teachings of this higher-dimensional force into her paintings, poetry, music, and films. Peavy believed that Lacamo energetically transmitted information via sound waves, with electronic and gamelan music proving especially effective as conduits for its mystic vibrations. Peavy also designed and constructed intricate masks, veiling herself for deeper attunement to Lacamo’s esoteric communiques. Today, Icelandic musician Björk, with her fantastical James Merry-designed masks and crystalline experimental compositions, seems like a contemporary manifestation of the extraordinary wavelengths Peavy sought to bring into our physical realm.