About
Artist Statement
CV
Paulina Berczynski is a Polish-American artist and designer working on interdisciplinary projects through social practice, as a cultural worker, and in the studio. She often employs fabric to facilitate exchange in participatory projects. Her work is influenced by traditional forms such as quilts and domestic crafts, movements for social justice, utopianism, and the aesthetics and resistance of occupied 1970-80s Poland.
Paulina maintains a studio practice and writes about radical textiles for Feral Fabric Journal, where she is co-founder and art director. She recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship to study The Polish School of Textiles in Łódż, during which she also worked in the community on The Trzepak social sculpture, and textile workshop series. She was the 2022 recipient of Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure grant for Feral Fabric Journal, and of a 2023 Prelinger Library residency focusing on California’s intentional communities and back-to-the-land movement. In 2024, She was part of Zusa’s international What’s Next Residency, where she led workshops for Around the Tablecloth in Wrocław and Berlin.
Paulina has lectured on contemporary textile art at the university level in the United States and in Poland. She has written for Textile: A Journal of Cloth and Culture (based in the UK), and received an individual artist grant from the City of Berkeley to create participatory story quilts with people experiencing homelessness in support of housing rights. Both individually and as half of Feral Fabric, she has led numerous textile-based workshops with California institutions such as High Desert Test Sites, Berkeley Art Museum, NIAD Art Center and Southern Exposure.
In her previous career, Paulina worked as an art director for some of the world’s biggest and most iconic brands such as Lucky Strike and Puma. FluffyCo, her sustainable lifestyle brand from 2004-2022, was sold internationally in hundreds of shops and online retailers, and made custom products for stores such as Target, Urban Outfitters, and Crate&Barrel. She is currently developing a new surface design project and beginning work on the 8th volume of Feral Fabric Journal.
She is based in Berlin.
Artist Statement
CV
Paulina Berczynski is a Polish-American artist and designer working on interdisciplinary projects through social practice, as a cultural worker, and in the studio. She often employs fabric to facilitate exchange in participatory projects. Her work is influenced by traditional forms such as quilts and domestic crafts, movements for social justice, utopianism, and the aesthetics and resistance of occupied 1970-80s Poland.
Paulina maintains a studio practice and writes about radical textiles for Feral Fabric Journal, where she is co-founder and art director. She recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship to study The Polish School of Textiles in Łódż, during which she also worked in the community on The Trzepak social sculpture, and textile workshop series. She was the 2022 recipient of Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure grant for Feral Fabric Journal, and of a 2023 Prelinger Library residency focusing on California’s intentional communities and back-to-the-land movement. In 2024, She was part of Zusa’s international What’s Next Residency, where she led workshops for Around the Tablecloth in Wrocław and Berlin.
Paulina has lectured on contemporary textile art at the university level in the United States and in Poland. She has written for Textile: A Journal of Cloth and Culture (based in the UK), and received an individual artist grant from the City of Berkeley to create participatory story quilts with people experiencing homelessness in support of housing rights. Both individually and as half of Feral Fabric, she has led numerous textile-based workshops with California institutions such as High Desert Test Sites, Berkeley Art Museum, NIAD Art Center and Southern Exposure.
In her previous career, Paulina worked as an art director for some of the world’s biggest and most iconic brands such as Lucky Strike and Puma. FluffyCo, her sustainable lifestyle brand from 2004-2022, was sold internationally in hundreds of shops and online retailers, and made custom products for stores such as Target, Urban Outfitters, and Crate&Barrel. She is currently developing a new surface design project and beginning work on the 8th volume of Feral Fabric Journal.
She is based in Berlin.