Milou Stella
French/Italian, b.1984
Drawing from folkloric traditions and visual storytelling Milou Stella creates bright surreal worlds populated by hybrid fantastical creatures to re-invent visual poetics that destabilise notions of gender and identity.
BIOGRAPHY
With a background in painting and sculpture, and working across various mediums comprising textile, digital technology, animation and performance as tools for experimentation, Milou Stella’s work deals with themes of family, trauma, identity and memory. She has both a studio-based and a collaborative practice embedded in the politics of participation, queer theory, and community. Drawing and sketching is often still her starting point in any of her projects with a recent focus on using recycled textiles and embroidery within her pieces.
She’s currently been awarded a place as artist associate at Open School East in Margate; rooted in East London, she has been involved in numerous Arts Council and Heritage Lottery funded projects, whilst her most recent work has been 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). Milou has a BA from Slade School of Art (UCL) and an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.