Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, Ph.D. (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and cultural activist. Her work has premiered at MoMA, V&A, MET, National Museum of China, and Gaité Lyrique and she has collaborated with NASA, the UN, and underground communities worldwide. Nelly is the founder of tuition free University of the Underground, NASA’s International Space Orchestra, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute’s Experiences department and LGBTQA+ nationwide festival Tour de Moon; director of five feature films examining diasporic and queer ecofeminist futures through an experimental lens, they have screened at festivals including SXSW, Munich Film Festival, Frameline, and the BFI London Film Festival. Recent work includes Art of London’s takeover of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, culminating in Piccadilly Un:Plugged, a world-first event broadcasting human heartbeats and unreleased tracks from Massive Attack and Pussy Riot to the moon and back with a 25-minute screening of Nelly’s film From The Void To The Full on Piccadilly Lights. They work from an artist collective- the Village Underground- based in a train carriage on top of a nightclub in London. She has two doppelgangers who work with her to appear at multiple places at the same time,a Barbie doll and a Lego made of herself. Since 2018, Nelly has been a senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, where she works to support freedom of thought against totalitarianism across borders. Her artwork has flown aboard the International Space Station, where she continues to develop decolonial cultural initiatives focusing on demilitarisation. In 2023, she led a lunar analogue mission in Spain exploring intergenerational trauma and space futures, resulting in the first academic paper on Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonial Futures in Space Exploration- combining neuropsychology, epigenetics, film and critical theory-to challenge oppressive narratives in the field.
Nelly was one of the Berlinale Talents in 2025 selected globally.