AITJ
​
Aphrodite Is The Jackal
full biography
IVA SEKHMET
​
​
​
​
" I truly believe that making music is like a ritual, a ceremony, a prayer.
We do channel, We ARE in touch with different dimensions, bringing all together through sound, vibration. Everything is vibration, energy. "
​​
​​
​
​
Aphrodite Is The Jackal (AITJ) is the musical project of Iva sekmet, a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends experimental electronic music, ritual performance, and spirituality into immersive experiences that explore transformation, through shadow into light, and collective healing.
​
Born in Cameroon to an Italian father and Nigerian mother, Iva spent her early childhood in Nigeria, where she attended the American International School in Lagos. Her upbringing was vibrant and active, filled with sports, dance, gymnastics, and music. Piano entered her life at the age of seven, marking the beginning of a lifelong relationship with sound.
Even during her earliest lessons, her musical instincts revealed themselves in unconventional ways. Rather than strictly following sheet music, she often memorized the movements of her teacher’s hands on the keyboard and recreated the pieces from memory at home—frequently altering notes along the way. What initially appeared to be mistakes were in fact the beginnings of intuitive composition, and by her early teens she had already begun writing her first songs.
​
When her family moved to Italy, music remained central to her life. As a teenager she began performing with local bands, first playing keyboards in a ska group called Fruit Joint, and later joining a reggae new-roots band as keyboardist and backing vocalist alongside more experienced musicians. Within that circle she met a guitarist who would become an important collaborator, and in 2008 they founded her first personal band,
​
Positive Monkeys, where she performed as lead vocalist, songwriter, and keyboardist. The band quickly gained momentum and eventually presented a demo to Sony Music in Milan. The label expressed interest and invited them to prepare a full album.
All the songs were written and composed by Iva and developed with the band members. Although the album was completed, internal tensions within the group led to the dissolution of the project.
​
Life continues...
​Around the same time, Iva discovered Italy’s underground rave scene—a parallel world of radical freedom, experimentation, and creative expression. Captivated by its energy and aesthetic, she immersed herself deeply in the culture, traveling across Europe’s festival circuits in a camper van while supporting herself as an artisan, creating handmade clothes, accessories, and making dreadlocks.
​
During these years she began producing electronic music using Ableton Live and performing live sets using controllers such as the APC40 and APC20. Her sound evolved within the free party movement, blending tribe techno, french-core, and experimental textures. The scene operated largely outside the internet and mainstream structures, relying on word-of-mouth networks across Italy, France, and the Czech Republic. Only existing footage of one these Tekno livesets.
​​
(warning sensitive content)
​​​​​​​​​While the scene offered creative freedom, it was also deeply intertwined with heavy drug use. Over time, Iva found herself drawn into that darker side of the culture and eventually developed a serious ketamine addiction. The turning point came unexpectedly during a moment of hesitation while at this point down the line considering taking another dose. At that exact moment, she received a phone call from her father. His brief but powerful words—“Be good”—cut through the haze. From that day forward, she never touched ketamine again.
Determined to rebuild her life, she stepped away from that environment and focused on healing and personal transformation.
The duality of life and every experiences for her, is to learn, evolve in Love and understand all aspects of human nature.
In 2017 she temporarily moved to Los Angeles, working as a tattoo artist while exploring creative opportunities. She developed new tracks within a creative household of musicians and international hiphop dancers. It is here that the name Aphrodite Is The Jackal was born. Out of a can of spray onto wall in Downtown L.A.
​
Tattooing had already become an important part of her life since 2013.
More than a profession, it evolved into a ritualistic practice that deeply
influenced her artistic philosophy.
The act of tattooing—combining pain, blood, symbolism, and transformation
reinforced her understanding of art as a sacred exchange of energy. gallery​​
​
In 2019 she moved to Berlin, a city long associated with underground electronic
culture. In an unexpected twist, she found herself living in a rehearsal space
shared by members of Spiral Tribe, pioneers of the very free-party movement
she had once sworn to leave behind. The experience symbolically closed a circle
in her life, forcing her to confront and integrate that chapter rather than simply
escape it.
Around the same period, her father became ill with cancer and passed away in
2020. The loss profoundly shaped her perspective and deepened her spiritual
outlook. About a month after his passing, Iva experienced a powerful moment
that further strengthened her sense of spiritual connection: while resting in the
room where she was sleeping, she had a vivid vision in which her father appeared beside her bed and reassured her that everything was going to be okay. For her, the experience felt unmistakably real and remains one of the most meaningful spiritual moments of her life. ​
One of many.
​​
After Berlin, Iva moved to Manchester, where she spent time recording music and immersing herself in the city’s cultural scene, exploring one of the UK’s historic musical landscapes. Her journey eventually led her to London.
She is now based in a creative district in North London. There, she collaborates with theatre actors, dancers, and visual artists, expanding her performances beyond the boundaries of traditional music shows.
Under the name Aphrodite Is The Jackal, her performances are conceived not simply as concerts but as multidisciplinary artistic rituals. Each track becomes a journey of its own, integrating music, theatre, movement, colour, body paint, and symbolic gestures into immersive ceremonies.
This approach reflects Iva’s broader identity as a multidisciplinary artist. Alongside her music career she has mastered the craft of tattooing and maintains a visual art practice that includes mixed-media canvas works presented through her online gallery.
Across all these mediums, a common philosophy emerges: for Iva, art and ritual are inseparable. Music, performance, tattooing, painting, and life itself become interconnected expressions of the same creative force.
Within this vision, every performance, artwork, and interaction becomes part of a larger ceremony. As she sees it, life itself is a ritual—one that can be approached consciously, creatively, and with deep reverence for the transformative power of art.
"is your music demonic?"
​
After one of her live performances in London, she was asked an unusual question,
whether her music was demonic.
Surprised, she asked what had brought this impression and the listener explained that,
while listening, he felt possessed.
To Iva sekhmet, this was not something unsettling, but rather revealing.
"My music is not demonic, but deeply spiritual, maybe shamanic. What you experienced was not possession, but a state of profound immersion: a moment of complete alignment with the energy of my sound.
Probably the feeling of Oneness."
​
​
​
​