Paulina Bereza is an artist and material designer currently residing between Montreal, QC and Providence, RI. Working primarily through weaving, Bereza’s work resides in the space of liminality; representational and abstract imagery come together through analog and digital processes to form familiar yet unrecognizable spaces. Bridging craft practices, new technologies, and biomateriality, Bereza’s pieces are temporal landscapes built upon abstracted fragments, piecing together impressions that work across multiple time periods and locations. Drawing upon her experience as a first-generation immigrant, she creates scenes that conjure disorienting malleable spaces of hybrid identity. A personal archive of photographs from her journey from the early years of post-communist Poland, through transitional homes, and online sourced satellite imagery are a source place for her work. Her hybrid textiles form landscapes that capture traces of memories that are reconstructed through collages and extensive generative editing, reflecting the everchanging contours of her existence. A polychromatic color palette dictates the emotional and spatial atmosphere through the inherent material qualities of fibres, biomaterials, glass and digital materiality. As she navigates the ambiguity of her identity, Bereza deliberately abstracts and creates material behaviours that embody friction between a multitude of realities, trying to find familiarity in transition.
Paulina is currently in the final year of her MFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design. She previously graduated from Concordia University (BFA 2022) in Fibres and Material Practices. She is presently a Research Fellow in Society and Culture with the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, and in the past received support from the Canada Arts Council (2022), the Lenore G. Tawney scholarship (2023), and the Haystack Mountain School of Craft fellowship (2022). In 2021, she won the Outstanding Student Award (2021) as well as the Creative Promise Award (2021) with the Surface Design Association (SDA). Her recent works were featured in the International Linen Biennale of Portneuf (2021) and the international fibre exhibition, Future Tense (2021).
