I am Kelly Ardens.
I am a multidisciplinary artist and performer.
Scroll down to discover my story and my art 🠋
I consider myself creative, visionary and chaotic. I contaminate the artistic disciplines, because I find myself in all of them but at the same time in none of them.
So I let myself be colored like a line drawing on a blank page.
I love to confuse myself, transform myself, and imagine myself.
I let my passion for art devour and consume me: it is the only obsession I desire, and I feed on it.
My poetics are focused on betraying tradition: two words that have the same etymology but go in completely opposite directions.
I like to redefine the concepts of what is seen as “normal” or “natural.” These are two absolutely relative terms that often only serve to hide the taboos, differences, and queerness that permeate everything.
The more something comes from the heart, the better it makes me feel.
I usually like ‘raw’, visceral art that breaks the fourth wall and creates an atmosphere of truth.
I’m not interested in things that are polished and aesthetically ‘perfect’.
bio
Kelly Ardens is a multidisciplinary artist and performer from Sardinia who identifies as queer and neurodivergent.
She is currently working as a theatre performer on her two solo shows.
Her first show, The Margin, in 2024, won the SIAE’s “Per chi crea” competition as part of the PRESENT! programme within the FAR OUT Live Arts Festival 2024 at BASE Milano. Following the preview, several residencies and rehearsals with Fuorimargine – Sardinia’s Centre for Dance and Performing Arts Production – the work made its debut at the Fuorimargine 2025 festival. The performance tells her autobiographical story as a neurodivergent person. In her daily life, Kelly identifies herself as neurodivergent with joy as a way of challenging the myths of suffering and pathology that surround neurodivergent people.
In 2026, she won the prestigious international Open Dialogo 3 competition and travelled to London as a guest of Chisenhale Dance Space. The first studio performance of her piece Stories from My Body Before the Apocalypse was staged on 14 June at CDS. The work explores her body, which, by recounting stories from her own life, challenges aesthetic norms, the frenetic world of social media and stereotypes, whilst highlighting the beauty and importance of living in non-conforming bodies.
Her chaotic and multifaceted art finds expression across a variety of artistic fields, blending them together: she produces electronic songs over which she raps and sings, makes short films (one of which was a finalist at the 2024 Val Susa Film Fest), creates self-portraits using digital collage (for which she won a scholarship for advanced photography training), dances by taking belly dancing as a starting point and deconstructing it, does his own hand-poked tattoos, draws motivational doodles, has acted in a docuseries, has studied theatrical clowning, writes poetry, has contributed to published books, plays with alternative fashion by reusing second-hand clothes to create original outfits and accessories, and experiments with painting, ready-made installations and collage. She blends various artistic disciplines, and her starting point is to learn the technique and then turn it into something unique.
A graduate of the DAMS (Arts, Music and Performing Arts) in Bologna, she studied performance, theatre and dance with international artists such as Bush Hartshon, Sarah Blanc and Sivan Rubinstein, and Italian artists such as Silvia Calderoni, Silvia Gribaudi, Marco D’Agostin, Marta Ciappina, Cristina Kristal Rizzo, Marta Bellu, Laura Lucioli and Chiara Bersani. She has taken part in performances by other artists, such as Valentina Medda’s “Cities by night” and, since 2023, Chiara Bersani’s “Deserters”. She has been a member of “Al.di.qua. Artists” since 2021, an association representing disabled artists and entertainment workers.
She is a qualified life coach and mindfulness facilitator. She is also known as a mystic, a witch and a tarot reader: she has been studying the Tarot for twenty years and uses it as a tool for listening, healing and community-building. From a young age, she has developed spiritual gifts of which she is proud and which permeate her art and her presence.
Beyond mental health, her main themes are: love as a divine concept, femininity as a playground, being a witch through transqueerfeminist care, unconventional sexuality beyond the stereotypical male gaze, and revolutionary self-love.
Random things about me
I love🩷
the Universe, Love, God, Art, to create and to imagine, to burn with passion, to cry with joy, to feel loved, to spread love, small act of care, spiritual and motivational literature, to be silly, b-movies, to listen a lot of different music, to create playlists, to make lists, femmes fatales, be hyperfeminine, body performance, mindfulness, mayonnaise, to be curious & discover new things, underground fashion, DIY, to be intuitive, to feel blonde, to do tarot, musicals, bodymodifications, rainy weather, to wear pink, to wear hair accessories, deep meanings, to drink a lot of water, to write poetry, unicorns, dinosaurs, Hello Kitty, second-hand clothes, pixel art.
I hate 💔
fascism, to be in a box, people who shout for no reason, ignorance, arrogance, hang up the clothes, generalized anxiety disorder, stain my clothes, my ability to always spill food on myself, fake modesty, say “mental illness”, marketing strategies, sand in the shoes, be in the sun too long, people who never questions themselves, doing things in a hurry, misoginy, deliberate psychological manipulation, being late because of someone else, pop-rock ballads, identity crises, gender stereotypes, folding the pizza box, the sound of bread being cut, art for aesthetic purposes without meaning, torture films, peeling fruits.
I’m nerd for 🤓
tarot cards, mental health, etymologies, spaghetti & zapata western movies, random pop culture quotes in everyday conversations, retrogames, giant monsters, easter eggs and film trivia, quentin tarantino (sigh), labels relating to BDSM and fetishism, transqueerfeminist politics, electronic music genres, Disney classics, femmes divas, internet aesthetics, italian literature.
I collect 😍
hair bows, R. L. Stine’s “Goosebumps”, spiritual books, tarot cards & oracles that resonate with my practice, feathers, lingerie, horror masks, pastel-coloured stones, awareness, empty notebooks, cute stickers, latin and greek literature.
Fav music artists 🎶
Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Stromae, Britney Spears, Dorian Electra, And One, Angerfist, Infected Mushroom, Tommy Cash, Missy Elliot, SOPHIE, Hot Sugar, Rob Zombie, Mr. Oizo, Beats Antique, Baustelle, Aphex Twin, The Clash, Nirvana, Apashe, Joy Division, The Cure, Tropkillaz, Paolo Conte, Hucci, Brooke Candy, Thundersmack, Alice Longyu Gao, Sevdaliza, Edith Piaf, Etta James, Mina, eevee, Johnny Cash.
Fav movies 🎥
Chicago, Reservoir Dogs, Pretty Woman, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, La Haine, Mouline Rouge!, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Old Boy, For a few dollars more, Django, The Mercenary, Aladdin, The Lion King, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Monsters Inc., The Blues Brothers, Pulp Fiction, In Bruges, Escape from New York, The Thing, Jackie Brown, Toy Story.
Fav books 📖
I am Legend, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Siddharta, The Four Agreements, Cento poesie d’amore a Lady Hawke, Spoon River Anthology, Ossi di seppia, Catullo’s poems, The Profet, The Little Prince, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, The Bible.
Fav videogames 🎮
The Curse of Monkey Island, The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, Nidhogg, Day of the Tentacle, We Love Katamari, Sam & Max Save The World, Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, Silent Hill, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.