"The Natal Lacuna" at Lyles & King: Why Everyone’s Talking About Ophelia Arc

Image Courtesy of Anna Droddy 

By KEN KRANTZ July 4, 2025

Ophelia is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist who recently graduated with her MFA in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Her body of work is a haunting world of biomorphic crochet sculptures, and she is working diligntly in preparation for her first post-graduation solo show at Lyles & King: The Natal Lacuna. This title was chosen in reference to Luce Irigaray’s eponymous philosophical feminist text about Unica Zürn, a German artist known for her work focused on surrealism, mental health, and anagrams. 

“Your brain becomes a filter with a patina of everything you’ve encountered in your life. It’ll never look like anyone else’s (or even yourself a year from now)," explains Ophelia, surrounded by the notes and studies pinned across her studio.

Using yarn, tulle, and found objects, Ophelia Arc crafts visceral, flesh‑toned sculptures that balance delicacy and disquiet. The hanging forms evoke the raw physicality of a meat locker sifted through a filter of feminist introspection and material sensitivity.

Ophelia treats crochet as a potent tool of self‑inquiry, confronting viewers with uncomfortable truths about memory, the body, and the psychology of wound‑dwelling. In simpler terms, this means that Ophelia uses crochet as a powerful way to explore difficult emotions and personal pain. Her work brings up raw, sometimes uncomfortable feelings about things like memory, the body, and how people can get stuck in their own hurt.

Ophelia is incredibly brilliant. The exceptional level of recognition she has achieved prior to completing her formal education feels inevitable when considered within the larger framework of her rigorous practice. For Ophelia, making is never paused…it is a state of being. She crochets in transit, in conversation, even with her eyes closed. Her practice is ceaseless and embodied.

Image Courtesy of Anna Droddy

Ophelia’s clarity of focus is rooted not just in ambition, but in deeply personal moments that shaped both her worldview and her artistic intentions. “I was hospitalized as a kid, at ages 11 and 14. I remember how shitty the art was,” she recalls. “Seeing those photos was a tether to the real world. I became interested in art pieces placed in a non-art context as a bridge to reality, interested in transitional object theory and how something on the inside and outside of the real world could assimilate into real life… My long term goal is institutional acquisition in mental institutions, and I noticed that the people who did that had certain criteria.”

And thus, she went down the path to art school, despite the significant financial commitment. “By all accounts, I’m fucked. I’m still in debt,” she says, then pivots. “But I’m still lucky in many ways. The certain way I’m obsessive works in this world. This is my whole being… I’m giving it everything.” 

Image Courtesy of Anna Droddy

Ophelia first gained momentum during her BFA at Hunter College. The strength of Ophelia’s senior thesis there set her apart early on, signaling a level of sophistication and vision rarely seen at the undergraduate level. At that time, she was scouted by the Whitney Museum's Nakai Falcón, who still loves her work:

"I can confidently say that the relentless care and intentionality Ophelia dedicates to the refinement of her practice is unmatched. Carrying out the traditions established as early as the 1960s by her predecessors that prioritized the disruption of textile’s presence within creative culture and voicing feminist perspectives, Ophelia's lens vitally contributes to the position of fiber art as a catalyst for psychoanalysis in relational systems and investigating familial structures of upbringing. Home as place and tied to the self felt important for us framing Ophelia’s solo debut back in 2024; referencing this formative place, but not excluding formative experiences outside of the home. Having observed the progress since then in anticipation of her upcoming solo exhibition in June, the work has developed in a complexity that appears to more actively situate the viewer into familial settings of world building, while continuing to give the artist’s research more tangible forms. I’m eager to see how Ophelia furthers these site-related conversations that will more closely examine institutional interventions and the body’s agency."

By the end of her MFA, Ophelia had two stellar solo exhibitions under her belt: The Aesthetics of Decay (curated by Eric Shiner for Spring Break Art Show) and we’re just so glad you’re home (curated by Nakai Falcón for 81 Leonard Gallery). 

Instagram also played a pivotal role in amplifying Ophelia’s early visibility. Her uncanny sculptures quickly caught the attention of curators, collectors, and aspiring artists who discovered her work online before ever encountering it in a gallery. “I’ll have kids DM me, ‘I’m doing a project for school, can I interview you?’ I’ll hop on a Zoom with them in a different state or a different country. I love doing it,” she says. “They see me and know they can reach out, because I’m a person.”

Through consistent documentation, poetic captions, and glimpses into her making process, Ophelia built a digital presence that mirrored the emotional depth and material intimacy of her physical works. “My art is not a coveted, secretive thing,” Ophelia explains. “It’s a behavior or a process through which I understand my world.”

“When my work started selling, I was surprised,” she explains. “I put the money in a HYSA, and that’s what’s funding my studio for the year. I’m interested in making sure I have something that can sustain itself.”

Rather than risk a lapse in momentum, Ophelia moved directly into her MFA following her undergraduate degree. She commuted from Providence, Rhode Island to NYC via bus at least twice weekly to deliver work for her many solo and group shows. The ride is over four hours each way, but she made use of the time by working on her crochet sculptures. She recalls,  “Everything I did over there felt temporary, because I knew I would move back.”

Ophelia had to weigh the emotional and financial demands of graduate school against the real momentum she was already building in New York. The decision required an extraordinary level of trust in herself to stretch between two worlds, stay visible, stay sharp, and return stronger. 

Ophelia Arc’s story is not just one of early success; it’s one of endurance, clarity, and radical self-possession. She crochets them all together into forms that disarm and invite reflection. Every stitch, every scar, every choice in her work points back to an uncompromising commitment to her north star of institutional curation at any cost to mind, body, and wallet. As she steps into this next chapter, Ophelia is not just producing art; she’s building a world that remembers, resists, and, ultimately, reclaims.

Image Courtesy of Anna Droddy

Catch The Natal Lacuna at Lyles & King June 26 - August 2, 2025.