MILOU
STELLA
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