Lauri stallings is a social practice choreographer who works both inside and outside of art world institutions through her site-responsive process works with common materials to invoke particular places, collective voices, and communities of movement. Whether inhabiting a forest of 80 acres, or confined to the surface of a beam of light, the origin of stallings art extends outwards from the primary projections of the feet and hands. Her attention is to choreographic and poetic methods to feel what the body is, where it extends, while giving us a space to feel up to the edge of what we can know. Through this endeavor for liberation she invites the public to become a collaborator, and family. stallings work is a rigorously crafted group experience that asks how far can we go together, in a world that feels like it's wrestling us apart.
Lauri has participated in exhibitions nationally and internationally. From 2014 to present, she has shown at High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Frac Meca, Bordeaux, France; Duo Multicultural Arts Center, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary; Zuckerman Museum, Kennesaw, GA; MOCA GA; Swan Coach House Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Hudgens Center for the Arts, Duluth, GA; Florence Biennale, Florence, Italy; International Terminal, Hartsfield International Airport, Atlanta, GA; and, Jule Museum, Auburn, AL. She created a large-scale work for Creative Time New York, as part of the “Drifting in Daylight” exhibition. Lauri is the inaugural artist of Flux Projects, Atlanta, GA.
In 2009, Lauri founded glo, a non profit intersectionality-centered platform located in a 19th-century industrial space of the Goat Farm Arts Center on the Westside of Atlanta, Georgia.
Lauri has developed a number of community projects. In 2011-12, she organized glo platform around the restoration and temporary re-opening of Historic Maddox Pool in collaboration with City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, Park Pride, Reverend Hill’s Boys Club, and filmmaker Micah Stansell, in the Vine City neighborhood. In 2013-onward, she launched The Traveling Show, a long-term project traveling extensively to engage rural South communities with Living Walls, The City Speaks, and cross-sector collaboration. In 2015, she worked with Brooklyn Queens Land Trust and Global Kidz on a project with Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, and curators Cara Starke and Nato Thompson for Creative Time New York in Central Park. From 2015-16, she worked with Georgia Economic Development and Georgia Trust for Preservation on Unity in 3 Parts: A Rosenwald School Homecoming. In 2016-ongoing, she constructed SEARCH ENGINE for the Atlanta Contemporary, Octane Coffee house, and High Museum, investing in the possibilities of what sowing in semi-enclosed structures and gallery spaces could provide in an unstable future. In 2020-2021, she developed one part of a larger research piece in Westside Atlanta’s Proctor Creek and Bonnefont Marsh Nature Reserve in Bordeaux, France. In 2020-ongoing, she developed 17th Street Prairie on a vacant 2.5 acre lot in Atlanta’s Midtown, in close collaboration with Jaimie Dewberry, and glo. 2023 lauri collaborated with artist and beekeeper Janelle Dunlap, architect Keif Scheifler, and musician Kebbi Williams on the Barefoot Island project for Cochran Mill Park in South Fulton, GA. She responded to artist Sam Moyer’s exhibition in 2023 for a site-responsive immersive activation at the Jule Museum in Auburn, AL.
She has received several honors. In 2005, she received the Chicago Music and Dance Alliance Ruth Page Award, and was named Chicagoan of the Year. She was awarded Emory College Center for Creativity and Arts inaugural Community Impact Artist Award. Lauri is a Bogliasco Fellow. Lauri garnered an Academy of Arts & Sciences Rome Prize nomination. With glo, she received a Rauschenberg Foundation SEED Grant in 2013- 2016 for The Traveling Show. She is an Artadia award recipient, and a Hambidge Center for Arts & Sciences Fellow. She was Georgia Tech’s Resident Artist, and a MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow. She was the recipient of the 2018 Hudgens Prize. She was the High Museum of Art's first choreographer as artist-in-residence, and the recipient of the 2019 Lorenzo Il Magnifico prize at the Florence Biennale. In 2021, she received a French Heritage and Culture Foundation grant, supported by an Oakspace Residency. lauri is a United States Artist Fellow nominee (2018, 2022). She was named one of The 100 Most Influential Georgians in 2022 by Georgia Trend. With glo, she received an NEA Art Works Grant in 2023 for The Traveling Show. lauri received a 2023 Nexus Award, with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the community project, Barefoot Island.
She is a graduate of Point Park University (BFA). In 2021, Lauri graduated Summa Cum Laude in the inaugural cohort of the Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA, led by artist and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
Lauri has created several works for the stage. Lauri was Resident Choreographer of Atlanta Ballet from 2005-08, and collaborated with Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, star Janelle Monae’, the Dungeon Family, and spoken word artist Big Rube in the full-length multi-disciplinary production, big, and received a Prix Benois de la Danse nomination. From 2006-2010, she created works for American Repertory Ballet, Dutch National Ballet for Dance Chicago, Laban Center, England; River North Dance Chicago, Hubbard St. Dance Chicago, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Ballet Augsburg, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Ballet British Columbia, and American Ballet Theatre. Since 2010-ongoing, lauri has worked with conductor Robert Spano on a number of community-based works, staged operas, and ballets.
Lauri was raised in the margins in the Historically Black neighborhood of Gainesville, Florida. Her known oral history indicates that she is a 5th generation Southerner born of railroad linesmen, and the Barefoots of the North Carolina Lumbee Tribe along the Lumbee River who helped raise her momma and three sisters. In 2012, Lauri's older brother, artist Luke Stallings, died of complications to HIV/AIDS; to date she considers his life as her most important education.
Lauri makes all of her work at the Goat Farm Arts Center in Westside, Atlanta.