Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic For almost a fortnight from next weekend, visitors to Sotheby’s will encounter a curious sight. The auction house’s London headquarters in New Bond Street are set to host a free performance artwork called “The Eleven” created by the singer FKA Twigs. A “movement project”, in her words, it involves performers doing ritualised motions designed to improve one’s life. The august doors of Sotheby’s have never before been flung open for such a venture.In Twigs’s case, it is somewhat less unusual. Twigs, real name Tahliah Barnett, is an artistic free spirit. Over the past decade, she has come to occupy a rarefied realm where the worlds of music, fashion, art, dance and film blur together. “Sometimes, you know what, you’ve just got to do it,” she says breezily of her link-up with the venerable auctioneers.Originally from Cheltenham, she began her career as a dancer in music videos. She released her first album LP1 in 2014. Her songs are hard to pin down, alighting variously on R&B, hip-hop, experimental pop and electronic music. Concerts are bravura exercises in choreography and costuming. Her Sotheby’s show arrives on the heels of a starring role in US feature film The Crow. She also has a new album due out soon called Eusexua — a Twigs coinage for the ideal state of mind that she also promotes in “The Eleven”.The idea for the piece began forming around five years ago. It has been brought to fruition in the east London industrial unit that she shares with her partner, the photographer Jordan Hemingway. A metal staircase leads up to his studio, dominated by a sloping white backdrop for photo shoots. Downstairs is Twigs’s dance studio with a steel pole and floor-to-ceiling mirrors on which are scribbled written instructions in brightly coloured marker pens.Two cheerful little dogs greet me on arrival: a pair of Brussels Griffons going by the adventurous names of Bam Bam and Chicken Girl. Their owner, dressed in stylishly muted leisurewear, is sitting having make-up and hair done for photos to accompany the Sotheby’s show (taken by Hemingway). “I need to explain this well,” she says of “The Eleven”’s elaborate series of ritualised movements. “It’s a very in-depth method that is based around 11 pillars in my life, which I feel are also pillars in a lot of people’s lives.”The piece involves 11 performers enacting a repertoire of actions that Twigs has choreographed. The actions address 11 different aspects of living. One is a repetitive gesture designed to palliate screen addiction, for instance. She demonstrates it, rubbing one hand over another as though wiping something clean. Audiences at “The Eleven” will be encouraged to incorporate the practice into their own lives.“Let’s say for example I’m doing this wonderful interview and am incredibly lucky to be here but I’m getting this itch: I really want to be on Instagram,” she explains. “I’ve posted a picture 10 minutes ago and I really want to see how many likes it has got. Then I would just rub my hand, like this — just to remind myself to check back in, that I’m here with you, doing this interview.”Other categories, each with their own set of motions, relate to nature, self-expression, consumption, possessions and so on. Faith is one, by which she means general belief rather than religion (“I think we need something bigger than ourselves because we’re egomaniacs”). At Sotheby’s, the performers — including Twigs on certain days — will cycle through the movements, each one lasting 11 minutes. There will be a musical accompaniment. “I’m thinking about playing the same song all the time, on repeat,” she says with a laugh.The concepts behind “The Eleven” lie somewhere between the body-focused performance art of Marina Abramović and the prosperous wellness culture of California, where Twigs has spent time living. “Um,” she says when asked about the numerical significance of 11, “because I went to go and see a guy in LA” — she speaks cautiously, as though testing how her words might sound to non-West-Coast ears — “who sort of gives you clues about your life. He said, ‘As long as you do everything around the number 11, you’ll be fine.’”Such talk carries the stamp of comfortably evolved Californian consciousness. But there is a painful backdrop to “The Eleven”’s self-help ethos. Five years ago, she was in the aftermath of an allegedly abusive relationship with the Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf. Her claims of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress, which he denies, are due to be heard in a Los Angeles court next month. This distressing episode lies like a dark shadow behind her description of “The Eleven”’s genesis.“I think I was just wanting to improve my life and I just slowly started to acknowledge what felt good and what didn’t feel good,” she says. “It was like: ‘What’s upsetting me about my life? What can I see is bothering people about their lives? How can I create something that is able to inspire people to just focus on themselves?’”Her new album Eusexua represents another prong in the campaign. She is mysterious about its exact release date, but its rollout starts this month. Inspired by Prague’s nightlife while filming The Crow there in 2022, the music has a techno-inspired energy. The album’s title refers to a kind of euphoric state.“‘Eusexua’ to me is the moment when you get a really good idea,” she says, “almost like a line of light in your brain and you think, ‘I know exactly how to do it.’ Or for me it’s like the moment before orgasm, a moment of pure clarity, nothingness. It’s the moment when I’ve been dancing all night or sometimes when I have a run, I get into a nothing state.”“The Eleven” is intended to help us to reach this ecstatic state of attunement. Sotheby’s might seem an eccentric location for it, but there is an act of attunement here too: it fits with its efforts to open itself up to a wider public. Twigs’s show will coincide with a multicultural sale series called Currents, which Sotheby’s says is “designed to appeal to a new generation of collectors”. (The auction house last week reported an 88 per cent drop in its core earnings.)For the singer, the venue matters less than the message. “I just want to have people go and see it,” she says. “It’s a very meaningful project for me. But I love Sotheby’s.” When she first visited, she was accompanied by two women with whom she had workshopped the piece. The trio were accosted by a man demanding to know why they were there.“The fact that I’d walked into that building and somebody literally said: ‘What are you doing here?’ Not knowing who I am, not anything like that, just: ‘What are you lot doing in here?’ And I thought: ‘How brilliant, this is exactly where “The Eleven” needs to be.’” Her performance piece about self-improvement has found its blank slate.‘The Eleven’ is at Sotheby’s in London from September 14-26Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
