is a Brussels based artist whose practice focuses primarily on creating scenography and social artistic work in Belgium and the Netherlands. In 2023 they graduated from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam and since then they have collaborated with artists such as Melyn Chow, Yoko Haveman, Zephyr Bruggen, Charlotte Gillain and ashley ho+dominik naue. In their scenographic work, they explore how boundaries can be created within spaces and how performers or audiences can cross them.

Their work explores ritual, collective experience and transformation through performance and textile. Lena Michel creates situations in which audiences become participants, moving between celebration, labor and choreography. Drawing on craft traditions and communal practices, their work investigates how spaces can direct and demand certain movements and how performers and audiences can move with or against these limitations.

Together with Melyn Chow they created the scenography for the performance Shaking Shame, which won the VSCD Mime Performance Prize 2025. In this work they challenged the audience by surrounding the naked performers creating a space where the performers as well as the audience could move from shame to liberation.

Since 2022 they have been part of the participatory dance organization Leon. Leon brings together communities who would normally not meet, through movement and dance. The organization mainly works in the public space, inviting passers-by to join the ateliers and participate.

Since 2024 Lena Michel works as the artistic coordinator together with one of the founders of Leon and choreographer Seppe Baeyens. Lena Michel gives dance ateliers in de Pianofabriek in Saint-Gilles on Wednesdays from 4 until 6. Participation is free, there is always coffee and cake and everybody is welcome to join!

Together with the other Leon artists, they created Mariage in September 2024, a participatory dance performance in the public space where passers-by are invited to cocreate the scenography, costumes, dance and music. Lena Michel invited participants to contribute to the scenography and to decorate and claim the space around them.

Currently Lena Michel is working on a social-artistic project with Guus Diepenmaat and Kirsten van der Hoorn in De Unie der Zorgelozen in Kortrijk. Together with a group of women from organsization A’kzie, they will create a performance on bureaucracy and rituals. Lena Michel will develop the scenography together with these women, where the process is considered just as important as the final result.