FKA twigs opens up on what inspired her upcoming new album EUSEXUA – and the ‘healing programme’ she created alongside it

FKA twigs has opened up on what inspired her upcoming new album EUSEXUA – and the ‘healing programme’ she created alongside it.

The singer, 36, appeared on the latest episode of Spotify’s Countdown To podcast series, where she was interviewed by legendary singer-songwriter Imogen Heap.

FKA, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, shared her candid insights into the album’s origins and what the word means to her, ahead of it being released on January 24.

Along with the coining of the term EUSEXUA, FKA twigs has created THE ELEVEN: eleven pillars of movement, designed to be a form of self-healing, every one being informed by her lifelong study of movement as a dancer. 

Describing the album, the singer said: ‘EUSEXUA is really this mixture of slightly psychadelic, childlike, playful exploration of what it is to be human. But then mixed with that, this raw, dirty, hard, sexual grit as an undertone.

‘I created these 11 pillars and made up these words for them. I started to, adjacent to the album, make up these words like croning, which is an addiction to technology. 

FKA twigs has opened up on what inspired her upcoming new album EUSEXUA – and the ‘healing programme’ she created alongside it

The singer, 36, appeared on the latest episode of Spotify ‘s Countdown To podcast series, where she was interviewed by legendary singer-songwriter Imogen Heap

‘The 11 pillars were aspects of my life that I felt if I looked at and made adjustments to then I could be closer to EUSEXUA.’ 

She continued: ‘For me, EUSEXUA is creating purely and unabashedly, it’s feeling more comfortable in my body sexually, it’s being more present and being able to be at that pinnacle of human experience as much as I possibly can.

‘So I made up this 11 steps healing programme which is a lot of girating and shaking. It’s incredibly raw and primal movement.’

Speaking about why she made the album, she admitted: ‘I had no choice. Before EUSEXUA I was hanging on by an eyelash. 

‘It feels like a matter of survival. It comes back to these 11 pillars that I had to create to be able to make EUSEXUA and these 11 pillars are there to help me.

‘Now I’m giving them to the world. It helped me all of my life. I cannot make art if I am surrounded by past versions of myself.’

Also opening up on her dance background, she recalled: ‘I started dancing when I was seven and I was professional by the time I was 12. I was in dance competions. I was classically trained when I was young and then when I got older I started to despise dance actually.

‘I despised the rules around it and I despied how one’s body had to look a certain way or be a certain way.’

In September, the singer unveiled her conceptual piece of performance art at Sotheby’s, the first of its kind to be shown at the 280-year auction house. 

She conceived the visual movement-based artwork called The Eleven with a rotating group of eleven ‘movers’ to perform the work.

FKA, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, shared her candid insights into the album’s origins, the 11 pinnacles of EUSEXUA, and what the word ‘eusexua’ means to her

Describing the album, the singer said: ‘EUSEXUA is really this mixture of slightly psychadelic, childlike, playful exploration of what it is to be human’

She explained: ‘I created these 11 pillars and made up these words for them. I started to, adjacent to the album, make up these words like croning, which is an addiction to technology’

In September, the singer unveiled a conceptual piece of performance art at Sotheby’s, the first of its kind to be shown at the 280-year auction house 

She conceived a visual movement-based artwork called The Eleven with a rotating group of eleven ‘movers’ to perform the work 

FKA twigs calls the art a ‘movement project’ that involves these movers doing ritualised motions
designed to improve one’s life.

These choreographed actions are meant to correspond to eleven different aspects of living. 

‘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,’ she told the Financial Times.

Audiences at ‘The Eleven’ were encouraged to incorporate the practice into their own lives.

The idea formed five years ago and finally came to be in her east London studio before being exhibited at Sotheby’s.

The piece was complemented by an exhibition of twigs’ sketchbooks, drawings, diaries and polaroids, alongside photographs by Jordan Hemmingway.

Hemmingway is twigs’ boyfriend who she revealed in a now deleted Instagram post in March 2023.

Twigs has since kept her relationship with the London-based photographer out of the public domain.

At the same time she was forming the idea for this work, twigs came to the end of an abusive relationship, according to her claims, with the Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf.

He and FKA Twigs brokeup in 2019, and in December of 2020 she filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing him of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, along with knowingly giving her a sexually transmitted disease.

LaBeouf has denied all of FKA Twigs’ allegations.