Grimes has an unusual strategy for maintaining her career in the later stages of “manifesting a human soul”
If you need Grimes throughout the rest of her pregnancy and for a while after, you can take matters up with WarNymph. In a new interview with The Face, the Canadian techno-pop artist explained her new approach for working while “manifesting a human soul” and maintaining her mental and physical health at the same time: She’s created a digital avatar to take her place.
“Having a digital body allows me to keep working throughout the later stages of my pregnancy, and after I have my baby, so I can spend more time with them,” Grimes told The Face.
Grimes explained that although her human self is “much more limited” her digital avatar can take on more identities and more obligations, like going to photoshoots in her place. (She can also “age, die, respawn, change her face.”) She calls the idea “techno-feminism” explaining how WarNymph is helping her to juggle a busy life.
“A lot of my friends aren’t having babies because they’re worried about their careers, and we wanted to find a way to overcome this issue,” Grimes said.
The artist shared the magazine cover on Instagram asking for input from her fans writing, “Does she look like me? Should she be more fantastical? What edits would you make to @warnymph beta 1.0?” In the digital photos of WarNymph, the avatar has large, heavily lined eyes, elf-like ears, a bald head, oh, and she’s wearing full Balenciaga.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8zjeFVl_Kg
Grimes linked to the WarNymph’s own Instagram page, which has nearly 30,000 followers, even though the account is set to private.
She also gave more explanation in her caption for why she made the avatar.
"A huge part of why we made her was cuz I knew I might have to delay my album due to the way it’s synching up w my whole health scenario and rly didn’t wanna do that again !" she wrote.
WarNymph also works as a way for Grimes to “untether” her digital self from her humanity and preserve her mental well-being along the way in pregnancy and beyond.
It’s hard on the psyche to have so much negativity thrown your way on a daily basis via social media," Grimes said to The Face. "I hear about how ugly or stupid or annoying I am every day… It’s sort of like being in an emotionally abusive relationship after a while. It takes a toll."
We’ll be curiously following along WarNymph’s journey from Version 1 to Version 2, and so on, and we hope Grimes gets the space she needs for her personal health.