I am Kelly Ardens.
I am a multidisciplinary artist and performer, a mystic and a mental health activist.
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.
theater performance
writing
music
visual arts
dance
tattoo
photography
fashion
film-making
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 root 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, even if it’s not technically perfect and polished like a wedding favor.
I usually like “dirty,” visceral art that breaks through the fourth wall and creates a specific mood of truth.
click here to see the fundamental inspirations behind my research:
hyperfemininity, divas and femme fatales, exploitation and B movies, the kinky world, electronic music, kitsch, kawaii, God and witchcraft, transqueerfeminist care, do-it-yourself, underground fashions, and internet aesthetics.
bio
Kelly Ardens is a multidisciplinary artist and performer, a mystic, and a mental health activist.
Her chaotic and multifaceted art is expressed in various artistic fields, contaminating them: she produces electronic songs on which she raps and sings, makes short films (one of which was a finalist at the Val Susa Film Fest 2024), creates self-portraits with digital collages (with which she won a scholarship for advanced photography training), dances, starting from belly dancing and deconstructing it, tattoos herself using the handpoke technique, draws motivational doodles, has acted in a docuseries, has studied theatrical clowning, writes poetry, has collaborated on published books, plays with underground fashion by reusing old clothes to create original outfits and accessories, and experiments with painting, ready-made installations and collage. She combines various artistic disciplines, and her starting point is to learn the technique and then turn it into something unique.
A graduate of DAMS in Bologna, she studied performance, theatre, and dance with international masters such as Bush Hartshon and Sarah Blanc, and national masters such as Silvia Calderoni, Silvia Gribaudi, Marco D’Agostin, Marta Ciappina, Cristina Kristal Rizzo, Marta Bellu, Laura Lucioli, and Chiara Bersani. She has participated in performances by other artists such as Valentina Medda’s “Cities by night” and, since 2023, Chiara Bersani’s “Deserters”.
In 2024, his first solo show, “Il Margine” (The Margin), won the SIAE’s Per chi crea competition as part of the PRESENT! section inside the FAR OUT Live Arts Festival 2024 at BASE Milano.
After the preview, several residencies and studies, “Il Margine” debuted at the Fuorimargine 2025 festival, telling her autobiographical story as a neurodivergent person. She defines herself as joyfully neurodiverse in order to dispel the myths of suffering and pathology that surround neurodiverse people.
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.
She is also a qualified life coach and mindfulness facilitator.
She has been a member of “Al.di.qua. Artists” since 2021, an association representing disabled artists and entertainment workers.