Ileana Arnaoutou (b.1994) graduated in 2017 from the Slade School of Fine UCL with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art, and in 2018 from University College London with an MA in Art History. Ileana is currently living and working in Athens, mainly focusing on painting, drawing, sculpture and writing; tackling questions around notions of embodiment, safety and mourning as potent spaces of care.
In 2018 Ileana co-founded Athens Open Studio, an artist run space in Athens focusing on practice-led inquiry and education.
From 2019 Ileana has been developing a collaborative practice with sculptress Ismene King, creating a sympoietic condition that focuses on sculptural and community forming practices, based on co-making as an embodied and subjective way of relating with one another, and their surroundings. They approach their collaboration as an extension of their personal practices and a result of an urgency to contemplate around issues such as embodied femininity and loss as a potent and porous situation, notions which they consider essential to unravel in a collaborative manner. They have been awarded the 2022 GnA Mamidakis Foundation Art Prize for their in situ sculptural installation 'Tender shell geophilia'.
Ileana has participated in various group exhibitions, a selection of which is: 'Broken Heart Syndrome' in Two Thirds project space in Athens, 'ATHENSYN II: Going Viral' in Steinzeit gallery in Berlin, '21! New Greek Painting' at the Archaeological Museum of Agios Nikolaos in Crete, 'APOTROPAION' in 16 Fokionos Negri/The Felios Collection, 'Intimacy: A Modern Tyranny' in the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and has been awarded the ARTWORKS Fellowship programme in 2020 funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Schilizzi Foundation scholarship and the UCL bursary.