Spin reports that M.I.A.’s upcoming album Matangi has been delayed past its previously announced December release. But as her cover story in Paper illustrates, Maya Arulpragasam is plenty busy with an upcoming art exhibit and her just-released book.
She’s creating an “architectural piece” for the first Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kerala, India. It opens in December, and she plans to turn it into the stage set for her next tour.
While she was working on the piece, she found some of the inspiration behind her upcoming album:
“When I went to India, I was looking on Google for stuff that was the color of a certain green, and that’s when this green goddess, Matangi, popped up. I was like, that’s weird, the whole time I’ve been alive on this planet, my mom never mentioned where my name came from. Matangi was the goddess of knowledge and the arts–music, art, dancing, spoken word. When they invented this mythology 4,000 years ago, the concept of someone being about all those things was normal.”
The Paper article also details her new self-titled book, which is out now via Rizzoli. It features artwork from each of her previous releases, essays, lyrics, and more. You can buy it alongside her “Bad Girls” USB necklace.
