Lou Lou Sainsbury (b. 1994; London) is an artist based in Rotterdam & London, working across moving image, live-performance, poetry, drawing, sculpture and textiles. Sainsbury’s work seeks to tell stories exploring histories of resistance, transformation and entanglement. With collaboration at the core of her practice, rituals and invocations, collective study, domestic intervention, adaptation, songwriting and make-shift mutations make up some of her idiosyncratic research methods.
Making connections between spirituality, medicalisation, colonialism and technology, her tricksterish work attempts to excavate a historical and imagined past of transfeminized and queer life within the brokenness of human and more-than-human worlds. Sainsbury received her MA in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute in 2021 and her BA in Moving Image at the University of Brighton in 2016. Previously she was an associate artist at Open School East in 2017. She is currently an associate artist of Conditions Studio Programme in Croydon. In 2024, she started the collaborative project mosquito girlfriend with artist and filmmaker Gabi Dao.
Her recent solo exhibitions include Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles (2024); Roodkapje, Rotterdam (2023); Gasworks, London & Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2022); and Well Projects, Margate (2020). She has presented in group exhibitions and festivals internationally including Chapter (Cardiff), Rencontres Internationales (Paris & Berlin), Alchemy Film Festival (Hawick), International Film Festival Rotterdam, Tate Modern (London), Nottingham Contemporary, La Casa Encendida and Yaby (Madrid). Sainsbury has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Mondriaan Fonds (2023 & 2025) and Freelands Gasworks Partnership Programme (2021- 2023). In 2024, she was an artist in residence at EKWC (Oisterwijk). Her writing has been featured in journals and publications including Arcadia Missa, zweikommasieben, Almanac and SALT Editorial.
loulousainsbury@gmail.com