Luminara Florescu
I view the body as an archive that holds our lived experiences — with limits, thresholds and days when it cannot be accessed. From this understanding, I have developed a working practice that follows the rhythm of nature and honours my body's response to each season.
Using the idea of "the artist's edit" as a creative process, the work takes living form as a number of digital gardens containing creative constellations of weird archives, Crip libraries, Resistance resources and Maps To Get Lost By to create a 'Digital Commons'. These slow, body-paced ecosystems are open, organic, and ever-evolving without a focus on outcomes. They are a living repository of notes, data, PDFs and lived experiences, created from chronic illness and within enforced rest - not as administrative labour, but as art-making in its own right. Knowledge is circulated freely, and the archive grows toward anyone who finds themselves Unbelonging.
My collaborative and digital working experience is embedded in how I move through the world. I imagined and co-built The Slow Practice Collective as a way of life, to decondition myself from inner ableism, to offer a community and manifesto for chronically ill, disabled, and neurodiverse artists — working almost entirely digitally, across distance, in fragments, in the gaps between crashes.
I developed The Contract of Self Care, a free resource for artists to avoid exploitation and burn out, developed with an a-n Artist Bursary, created, shared, and circulated online as a digital commons in its own right. My Image-Maker residency at The Sociological Review Foundation was a practice in slow, body-paced making — producing film and image work that centred the unseen, the marginalised, the Unbelonging.
Lived Experience
I am a British-Romanian, chronically ill and neurodiverse artist, curator, artist mentor and community builder. My art practice is a form of Crip activism which aims to disrupt capitalist and ableist structures. When my body finally refused the hyper-productivity of the art world, I discovered collapse as revolutionary. In periods of enforced rest, I found a different way of making and a radical rejection of the notion that artistic worth comes from constant output. I believe in the power of playful disruption — art can be both gentle and radical. My practice seeks a creative (re)imagining of a care-based society through projects such as Rest As Protest and The Slow Practice Collective, bringing together communities of disabled, chronically ill and neurodiverse artists to explore creativity that exists in the territory of Unbelonging.
Luminara Florescu
07807 072322
BA (Hons) in Fine Art Kingston University
Arts Award Advisor, Trinity College London
Co-Founder & Creative Director of HEARTHSTONE Ways CIC (2020 -2023)
Awards and Commissions
2024 - AXIS Artist Research and Development Bursary.
2024 - CuratorSpace Artist Bursary.
2024 - Frome International Climate Film Festival - Best Female filmmaker
(Highly Commended) for 'Social Gardening (The Mind at Rest).
2024 - Zealous Amplify Environment Award - Public Vote Prize.
2023 - Artist Film Commission - Somerset Film.
2022 – Develop Your Creative Practice (DYCP) Grant – Arts Council England
2022 – Somerset Art Works Artist Bursary – to create large scale interactive artworks for Somerset Art Weeks Festival.
2021 – ‘Contract of Self Care’ – a-n artist bursary TIME, SPACE, MONEY
2021 – ‘Colour Your Mood’ – commissioned artist – Seed Sedgemoor – Zoom club combating loneliness & isolation through creativity during Lockdown
2020 – ‘NatureSpeaks’ – commissioned artist – Sensory podcast for Somerset Art Works Digital Open Studios Family Education.
2020 – ‘Freedom Learning Project’ – commissioned artist - Family wellbeing through nature, and plant medicine online booklet. Somerset Art Works Development Programme https://somersetartworks.org.uk/somersetreacquainted/luminara-star-florescu/
2019 – Awardee of The Ganes Trust grant for artists.
2018 – ‘Creative Pathways Bursary‘ – SAW (Somerset Art Works)
Exhibitions & Residencies
2026 - Self Care Scarf digital photo - Reflecting Ourselves: Disabled women's self-portraits exhibition. Together! 2012 CIC, Newham, London.
2025 - Crip Zines - I Am Leaving The Battlefield & Dear Spoons... - purchased by Wellcome Collection permanent Collections Library.
2025 – The Resting Room – OUR PLACE IN THE FAMILY OF THINGS – Dorman Museum, Climate Action Middlesbrough.
2024 - Image-Maker in Residence - The Sociological Review Foundation.
2024 - The Resting Room - Artist Residency at Create@#8 Art Space.
2023 - Artist in Residence - Somerset Film, The Engine Room, Bridgwater, Somerset.
2021 – ‘Artist Prison Residencies’ – Co-curator and contributing artist – Shepton Mallet Prison, Somerset https://prisonresidencies.wixsite.com/shepton
2021 – ‘Tarot for Covid’ – Restrictions exhibition, Clayhill Arts Somerset
2020 – ‘Portal’ – Contributing artist – Fourthland www.fourthland.com
2020 – Virtual ‘Happenings’ – Curator and contributing artist of group exhibition for Virtual Fringe Arts Bath Festival2020 https://www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/happenings
2019 – ‘B-Wing‘ – Co-curator/project manager/public engagement leader & contributing artist of group exhibition/event at Shepton Mallet Prison. Supported by ‘Lottery Funding from Arts Council England’. https://b-wing.weebly.com
2019 – ‘Mothership’ Artist Residency, Dorset.
2019 – ‘Love is Blind’ – City of Secrets exhibition, Liberty House, Bristol
2018 – ‘Hare Woman (Julian Cox)’ – Made In Bruton/Ape and Eden Art and Book
Launch in collaboration with author and historian Andrew Pickering.
2018 – ‘Fetus Totem (Green)‘ – Bruton Art Society Exhibition 65th Annual show Bruton, Somerset.
2018 – ‘Fetus Totem’ – Arts Open Exhibition, Town Hall Arts Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
2018 – ‘Creative Pathways Bursary‘ – SAW (Somerset Art Works)
2018 – ‘Domestic Bliss’ – HONESTY SHOP part of the ‘The Land We Live – The Land We Left Behind’ Exhibition – Hauser and Wirth Gallery, Somerset.
2017 – ‘Connection‘ – The Brooklyn Art Library’s SKETCH BOOK 2018 project.
2017 – ‘The Digital Flower Garden‘ – Bath 2017 Digital Art Festival.
2017 – ‘The Finality Of Your Decision’ – Summer Exhibition, Bruton Art Factory, Somerset.
Curated Projects
2022 -Outside In - Group exhibition & events at Shepton Mallet Prison, Somerset - Curator & Artist. Supported by OPEN Mental Health Community Grant.
2022 – ‘Artist Prison Residencies (Online) programme’ – Co-originator & falicitator
2021 – ‘Creative Wellbeing Through Sensory Herbalism’ – Course Leader, HEARTHSTONE Ways, SS&L Funded.
2020 – ‘Open Circles’ – project creator/lead – Wellbeing, Mindfulness and Creative Development Public Engagement project funded by SS&L
CAREER BREAK TO RAISE FAMILY AND RUN COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS.
2007 – One Year Artist residency – Those People Productions, Cardiff, South Wales.
2005 – ‘Penny Collectors‘ short film script award production grant by Welsh Film Council.
2004 – Work featured in AN Magazine
2003 – ‘Mother‘ – Chapter Gallery, ‘Experimentica’ exhibition, Cardiff, South Wales.
2002 – ‘Home Town‘ – chosen by the British Arts Council to represents emerging British Artist in Milan, Italy.
2002 – ‘Home Town‘ – Gallery 39, Cardiff, South Wales.
2001 – ‘Noble Offerings‘ Book Art piece became part of the permanent collection at Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
2000 – Curator and exhibiting artist – Domestic Gallery “Here & There” exhibition, London.
2000 – Three months residency at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy
Featured in
In 2024 we gave out £500 bursaries to the following Axis Professional Members: Sarah Skinner, Caitlin Griffiths, Michael Takeo Magruder, Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Michelle Baharier, Ricky Romain, Luminara Florescu, Catherine Wynne-Paton, Jera May.
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