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Milou Stella's interdisciplinary art practice challenges and questions normative concepts of identity, gender, and social categorisation by merging digital technology, animation, performance, sound, and painting.

 

Through their hybrid artworks - sculptures, installations, and multimodal performances - they aim to resist simplistic binaries and categories, blurring boundaries through collaborations and research. Stella's artistic practice explores the tension between the individual and the collective and reimagines visual poetics rooted in folklore and storytelling. Her practice is about resistance and relationships.

 

They use sound clips, field recordings, and personal texts as starting points for creative experiments that include participation, conversation and devising techniques as part of their process, drawing inspiration from thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Joan Joan, Michel Foucault, and ideas from Glitch feminism and experimental and improv theatre which they embed within their performances.

By embracing hybridity, Stella creates opportunities for sharing visions of playful simultaneous inner realities, celebrating expansive ways of seeing and being in the world. Their work invites us to question and deconstruct societal norms and to embrace the beauty and complexity of fluid and dynamic identities.

Her work was recently exhibited as part of Traces: Stories of Migrations (2021, Poplar) in partnership with London College of Fashion and Making For Change; and in Utopia: Eco-Feminisms, Art from Heart (2021, Mile End). She was the main visual artist of The Molly’s Masquerade (2020-21) in partnership with St Margaret’s House and Heads Bodies Legs Theatre (Arts Council England, Heritage Fund UK). This was a year long queer community and participatory project where Stella contributed a textile installation exploring the intersectionality of the lives of 18th century London queer pioneers. She also co-led the R&D Imagi-Nation.png exploring the radical meaning of ‘care’ through electronic music and performance with theatre maker and Japanese punk musician Kazuko Hohki and participants from the Carers Centre of Tower Hamlets, using digital technology, online events and improv music techniques to devise the future of the project.

CV

Exhibitions and Participatory Projects

 

Marking Time, Hypha Studios, 60 Conduit St, Jan 23

Open School East Open House "From Gardens We Feel Secure", Dec 22

Open Studio: The Elusive Good Egg, The Create Place, Apr 22

Traces, Group Exhibition with London College Of Fashion, Nov 2021

Utopia, Eco-feminisms, Group Exhibition Oct 2021

 

Art 2 Art Chats, 2020 

Baba Yaga Collective, 2020 - ongoing

Molly’s Masquerade, 2020 - 21

Creative Resistance Craft Klub, 2020

 

Embroidery Mental Health Service, 2019

Fall Out Club, 2019

East London Tapestry, 2018-2020

Embroidery Loop meet - ups, 2017 - 2022

Moody Bright Designs - 2017 - present

Witches Of Odd, 2014-15 

Selected Performance Based Works

Upcoming: Open School East End of Year Show - June 2023

In Vitro, The Create Place, Apr 22

Baba Yaga Collective, 2020 - ongoing

Molly’s Masquerade, 2020 - 21

Fall Out Club, 2019

Embroidery Mental Health Service, 2019

Witches Of Odd, 2014-15 

 

Selected workshops

Mendoza Mania, Red Cross, 2023

Molly's Masquerade, Spoon Dolls (online and in person), 2020-21

Apple and Snakes Festival, 2020

Hackney Services Rehab, 2019

SCT, Choices Recovery community, 2019

Embroidery for Wellbeing, St. Margaret’s house, Bethnal Green 2017 - ongoing

Red Cross Fundraiser workshop series, 2018

 

Awards & Residences

Mendoza Mania, Heritage Lottery Fund Project in partnership with St. Margaret's House, 2022-2023

St. Margaret's House Artist in Residence, Jan 2022-Apr 2022

Arts Council R&D  Imagi-Nation42.png , 2021

Arts Council Project Grant, 2020

Arts Council Emergency Fund 2020

Heritage Fund Project Grant, 2020

St. Margaret’s House, Facilitator in Residence 2017- current

Fabrications, Facilitator in Residence 2017 - current

 

Training

Improv Theatre level 1, 2, 3 - Theatre Deli, 2021-22

Mental Health First Aid , 2021

Trans awareness training with Gendered Intelligence, 2020

Sex workers Rights Training with Alex Hetchart of Sex Workers Opera, 2020

 

Published Work

Dust online magazine, 2020

Meander (poetry Pamphlet), Annexe Press, 2014

 

Education

Open School East Associate Artist programme, 2022-23

MSt Creative Writing, University of Oxford, 2010-2012

BA Fine Art, Slade School of Art, UCL, 2003-2007

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