In this short video, artist Luminara Florescu shares her experiences working with Mark as a mentor within her Arts Council England, Developing Your Creative Practice grant.
Further information
Luminara Florescu is a British-Romanian artist living in rural Somerset. Her art practice is a form of crip activism that aims to disrupt capitalist and ableist structures through embodying the trickster superpowers of humour, playfulness and doing less. Luminara views her practice as a social movement that seeks a creative (Re)imagining of a care-based society through projects such as Rest As Protest and The Slow Practice Collective. Her work is deeply rooted in her experience as an artist living with chronic fatigue, chronic pain and neurodiversity.
One significant part of her creative practice is to explore the concepts of resting, slowing down, and doing less as a powerful means to combat climate change. By questioning the societal norms of consumerism and hyperproductivity, Luminara aims to offer rest as an antidote to these exploitative practices. Her work also delves into ideas of inclusion, access, and rest, challenging the capitalist constructs of grind culture and overworking. Through acts of gentle protest and creative activism, Luminara seeks to test and transcend perceived boundaries of art.
Luminara has created short films for Channel 4 with her film Home Town being selected by the British Film Council to represent emerging British artists in Milan. Her limited edition artist book, Noble Offerings is also part of the Artists’ Books collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. From 2019 to 2022, Luminara led the pioneering Art Behind Bars programme in partnership with Shepton Mallet Prison, developing a number of innovative projects, including the Artist Prison Residencies and the Outside In exhibition.
Luminara’s practice has been supported through significant grants and commissions, including the Contract of Self Care (a-n Artist Information Company’s Time, Space, Money artist bursary) and Rest As Protest (Arts Council England’s Develop Your Creative Practice Grant). Recent film commissions include Social Gardening (The Mind At Rest) for Somerset Film’s Artist in Residence programme and If We Were Truly Visible for The Sociological Review Foundation’s Image-Maker in Residence initiative.
www.luminaraflorescu.com | www.instagram.com/luminara_florescu