Cristina Milea
(weiblich)
Kostüm- und Setdesign
Cristina Milea is a Romanian costume designer and stage designer based in Berlin, Germany. She works across theatre, dance, multimedia installations, film, and artistic research. Her practice is interdisciplinary, combining traditional craftsmanship with experimental materials, biomaterials, upcycling processes, and ecological perspectives. She is the founder of Sarlatan.ro, an upcycling art platform developed in collaboration with independent international artists. Through this platform, she develops projects that explore sustainability, cultural memory, and material transformation in performative and exhibition-based formats.
Her work focuses on costume as a living archive and explores themes such as identity, autonomy, symbiosis, sustainability, and survival. She investigates how costume and scenography can function as sites of memory, ecological awareness, and speculative futures. Her artistic research frequently combines biological processes, textile experimentation, and performative installation formats, engaging with microbial life, organic waste, and posthuman narratives.
Education and Artistic Research:
Cristina Milea studied scenography at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, where she completed her Bachelor’s degree in 2007 and her Master’s degree in 2010, specializing in upcycling art and sustainable scenographic practices.
In 2024, she continued her artistic research at the BioHack Academy of the Waag Society in Amsterdam, focusing on biomaterials, soft robotics, microbial textiles, and biohacking. This period marked a significant expansion of her practice into the field of bioart, living materials, and speculative costume design.
Professional Practice:
Since completing her studies, Cristina Milea has worked as a freelance costume and stage designer for theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary performance contexts. Her work has taken her to numerous institutions and festivals in Romania, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. She has designed costumes and stage concepts for over 70 theatre, dance, and film productions, collaborating with directors, choreographers, and dramaturgs in both repertory and independent contexts. Parallel to her theatre work, she has developed a strong installation and exhibition practice, often transforming stage materials into sculptural objects that extend the life of theatrical scenography beyond the performance moment. Her installations engage with themes of fragility, memory, posthuman identity, and ecological responsibility, frequently using organic waste, biomaterials, and recycled textiles.
Selected Artistic and Research Projects:
Purple Power Play (2024-2027, with Waag BioHack Academy, Amsterdam)
A biomaterial and soft-robotic costume installation reimagining female icons such as
Empress Theodora through feminist and biopolitical perspectives.
Hug (2026–2027, work in progress)
An interactive sculptural project using soft robotics and biomaterials such as wool,
exploring how reality takes shape through textures, tactility, and emotion as sensory
archives.
Flee Market (2026, work in progress)
A collage-based installation exploring liminal childhood memories formed during the
transition from a dictatorial political system to democracy in early 1990s Romania,
combining organic waste (finding value in the overlooked) with technology.
Microbial Wander (2024 Scenography Bienalee Bucharest).
A research project exploring organic waste leather, mycelium growth, coffee leather,
kombucha leather, and textile dyeing with bacteria, investigating microbial growth as a
form of material agency.
Transposthumante / Transhumance (2024, House of European Institutes, Timișoara)
An interdisciplinary exhibition exploring nomadism, migration, and fluid identity through
posthumanist theory, applied to the study of lichens and their symbiotic existence.
Teaching and Pedagogy
Since 2021, Cristina Milea has been a part-time lecturer in Costume Design at the Athanor Akademie in Passau, Germany.
Her teaching focuses on:
• Sustainable scenography
• Costume as narrative and archive
• Material experimentation
• Feminist historiography
• Character analysis
She emphasizes research-based design, encouraging students to approach costume not only as visual composition but as conceptual, ethical, and ecological practice.
Awards and Nominations
Cristina Milea has received several major awards and recognitions for her work, including:
• Best Show Award, Sächsisches Theatertreffen (2024)
• UCIN Award for Best Film Scenography (2023)
• UNITER Nomination for Best Scenography (2022)
• UNITER Award for Best Scenography (2020) for Dangerous Liaisons, directed by Cristi Juncu
• Lowendal Scenography Award (2010)
• Best Scenography Award, Piatra Neamț Festival (2010)
Selected Theatre and Dance Productions (Curated)
• Bloom (2025), Teatro 4Garoupas, Cologne
• The Younger Man by Annie Ernaux (2025), Kosmostheater, Vienna
• Muttersprache Mameloschn (2024), Freiberg, Germany
• In Resonance (2022), MU Budapest
• Ramanenjana (2022), Radialsystem Berlin / CNDB Bucharest
• Dangerous Liaisons (2019), Teatrul Mic, Bucharest
• Persona (2019), Odeon Theatre, Bucharest
• Woyzeck (2017), Chișinău
• Kimberley (2017), Comedy Theatre, Bucharest
• Three Sisters (2016), National Theatre Târgu Mureș
• Julius Caesar (2016), Craiova
• Castingul Dracului (2014), National Theatre Târgu Mureș
• The Golden Dragon (2013), Piatra Neamț
• Family Stories (2010), Sfântu Gheorghe
Film
• White Gate (2013), directed by Nicolae Mărgineanu — Costume Design
• Clouds of Chernobyl (2022), directed by Ligia Ciornei — Set and Costume Design
Installations and Exhibitions (Selected)
• Inside/Outside, Galateca Gallery, Bucharest (2020)
• Fragile, CNDB Awards, Bucharest (2014)
• Hikikomori, Kube Musette Gallery, Bucharest (2017)
• Faith Under Plastic (installation series)
• Barbie / Hello Kitty installation series (2020)
• Ethereal Ecosystems (biomaterials research installation)
Artistic Research Focus
Cristina Milea’s artistic research engages with:
• Bioart and living materials
• Costume as archive
• Feminist materiality
• Posthuman embodiment
• Memory and migration
• Textile biology
• Soft robotics
• Symbiotic systems
Her work integrates microbial life, organic matter, and waste materials into performative
and sculptural systems, questioning authorship, agency, and sustainability.
Languages
• Romanian (native)
• English (fluent)
• Spanish (intermediate)
• German (beginner)
Her work focuses on costume as a living archive and explores themes such as identity, autonomy, symbiosis, sustainability, and survival. She investigates how costume and scenography can function as sites of memory, ecological awareness, and speculative futures. Her artistic research frequently combines biological processes, textile experimentation, and performative installation formats, engaging with microbial life, organic waste, and posthuman narratives.
Education and Artistic Research:
Cristina Milea studied scenography at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, where she completed her Bachelor’s degree in 2007 and her Master’s degree in 2010, specializing in upcycling art and sustainable scenographic practices.
In 2024, she continued her artistic research at the BioHack Academy of the Waag Society in Amsterdam, focusing on biomaterials, soft robotics, microbial textiles, and biohacking. This period marked a significant expansion of her practice into the field of bioart, living materials, and speculative costume design.
Professional Practice:
Since completing her studies, Cristina Milea has worked as a freelance costume and stage designer for theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary performance contexts. Her work has taken her to numerous institutions and festivals in Romania, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. She has designed costumes and stage concepts for over 70 theatre, dance, and film productions, collaborating with directors, choreographers, and dramaturgs in both repertory and independent contexts. Parallel to her theatre work, she has developed a strong installation and exhibition practice, often transforming stage materials into sculptural objects that extend the life of theatrical scenography beyond the performance moment. Her installations engage with themes of fragility, memory, posthuman identity, and ecological responsibility, frequently using organic waste, biomaterials, and recycled textiles.
Selected Artistic and Research Projects:
Purple Power Play (2024-2027, with Waag BioHack Academy, Amsterdam)
A biomaterial and soft-robotic costume installation reimagining female icons such as
Empress Theodora through feminist and biopolitical perspectives.
Hug (2026–2027, work in progress)
An interactive sculptural project using soft robotics and biomaterials such as wool,
exploring how reality takes shape through textures, tactility, and emotion as sensory
archives.
Flee Market (2026, work in progress)
A collage-based installation exploring liminal childhood memories formed during the
transition from a dictatorial political system to democracy in early 1990s Romania,
combining organic waste (finding value in the overlooked) with technology.
Microbial Wander (2024 Scenography Bienalee Bucharest).
A research project exploring organic waste leather, mycelium growth, coffee leather,
kombucha leather, and textile dyeing with bacteria, investigating microbial growth as a
form of material agency.
Transposthumante / Transhumance (2024, House of European Institutes, Timișoara)
An interdisciplinary exhibition exploring nomadism, migration, and fluid identity through
posthumanist theory, applied to the study of lichens and their symbiotic existence.
Teaching and Pedagogy
Since 2021, Cristina Milea has been a part-time lecturer in Costume Design at the Athanor Akademie in Passau, Germany.
Her teaching focuses on:
• Sustainable scenography
• Costume as narrative and archive
• Material experimentation
• Feminist historiography
• Character analysis
She emphasizes research-based design, encouraging students to approach costume not only as visual composition but as conceptual, ethical, and ecological practice.
Awards and Nominations
Cristina Milea has received several major awards and recognitions for her work, including:
• Best Show Award, Sächsisches Theatertreffen (2024)
• UCIN Award for Best Film Scenography (2023)
• UNITER Nomination for Best Scenography (2022)
• UNITER Award for Best Scenography (2020) for Dangerous Liaisons, directed by Cristi Juncu
• Lowendal Scenography Award (2010)
• Best Scenography Award, Piatra Neamț Festival (2010)
Selected Theatre and Dance Productions (Curated)
• Bloom (2025), Teatro 4Garoupas, Cologne
• The Younger Man by Annie Ernaux (2025), Kosmostheater, Vienna
• Muttersprache Mameloschn (2024), Freiberg, Germany
• In Resonance (2022), MU Budapest
• Ramanenjana (2022), Radialsystem Berlin / CNDB Bucharest
• Dangerous Liaisons (2019), Teatrul Mic, Bucharest
• Persona (2019), Odeon Theatre, Bucharest
• Woyzeck (2017), Chișinău
• Kimberley (2017), Comedy Theatre, Bucharest
• Three Sisters (2016), National Theatre Târgu Mureș
• Julius Caesar (2016), Craiova
• Castingul Dracului (2014), National Theatre Târgu Mureș
• The Golden Dragon (2013), Piatra Neamț
• Family Stories (2010), Sfântu Gheorghe
Film
• White Gate (2013), directed by Nicolae Mărgineanu — Costume Design
• Clouds of Chernobyl (2022), directed by Ligia Ciornei — Set and Costume Design
Installations and Exhibitions (Selected)
• Inside/Outside, Galateca Gallery, Bucharest (2020)
• Fragile, CNDB Awards, Bucharest (2014)
• Hikikomori, Kube Musette Gallery, Bucharest (2017)
• Faith Under Plastic (installation series)
• Barbie / Hello Kitty installation series (2020)
• Ethereal Ecosystems (biomaterials research installation)
Artistic Research Focus
Cristina Milea’s artistic research engages with:
• Bioart and living materials
• Costume as archive
• Feminist materiality
• Posthuman embodiment
• Memory and migration
• Textile biology
• Soft robotics
• Symbiotic systems
Her work integrates microbial life, organic matter, and waste materials into performative
and sculptural systems, questioning authorship, agency, and sustainability.
Languages
• Romanian (native)
• English (fluent)
• Spanish (intermediate)
• German (beginner)
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Cristina Milea
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