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A Journey Between Worlds
At Haize, we are drawn to artists whose work blurs boundaries—between disciplines, cultures, and ways of seeing. Paula Riquelme is one such artist. Born in Chile and based in Berlin, she moves through space, memory, and material with instinctive grace. Whether performing in the air or weaving from the ground, Paula builds bridges between worlds, threading personal history into every stitch. Her work is both deeply intimate and universally resonant, rooted in the textures of daily life and elevated through her poetic sensibility. It is not every day that one encounters an artist like her. Paula has moved—both physically and creatively—between continents and disciplines. Her path into textile art began in a moment of profound stillness. After a fall that brought her career as a trapeze artist to an end, she returned to movement through her hands—specifically, through crochet. What started as a quiet act of recovery soon became a deeply rooted passion. While stuck in bed, immobilised, the artist decided to build a wall, the closest thing she could do to rise in the air again, stitch by stitch. It is this gesture that marked the birth of Maraña—a name that emerged from a family exchange about what name to give the project, as her daughter began calling her ‘mama araña’ in reference to the way her mother was always weaving and knitting wool like a spider. Since then, wool has become the central language through which she builds, connects, and dreams.
A Dada Spirit Reimagined in Wool
There is something distinctly Dada about Paula’s approach. Like the early 20th-century artists who cut and reassembled fragments of the past to challenge accepted forms of art, Paula gathers abandoned yarns, sweaters, and crochet relics, giving them new and fantastical life. Her approach recalls not only the Dadaists’ visual experiments but also their performative spirit—absurd, unorthodox, and rooted in a desire to provoke, disrupt, and awaken. Much like the spontaneous, irrational performances that defined Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, Paula’s work embraces the unexpected, creating a sense of ritual and presence through acts of creation. But unlike Dada’s sometimes disorienting chaos, her work remains anchored in tenderness, memory, and emotion. The result is poetic: she does not parody the past, but elevates it, giving it space to breathe and inspire.
The Legacy of Textile Art in Contemporary Practice
Once relegated to the realm of domestic life, fiber and textile art have re-emerged in contemporary practice. Long associated with feminine traditions and passed down through generations, these mediums have now found their place within the art world. Haize had explored this evolution before through the work of Olga de Amaral, whose luminous threads elevated weaving into architecture and transcendence. Paula stands firmly in this lineage, though her tone is undeniably her own—vibrant and unruly.
In Dialogue with Portuguese Textile Icons
While in Lisbon, her work also invites comparison with that of Joana Vasconcelos, who elevates domestic techniques like crochet into exuberant, large-scale artworks. While Vasconcelos often deploys humor and baroque spectacle, Paula’s approach is more introspective and emotionally layered. Both artists celebrate the cultural and symbolic weight of textile traditions and draw power from the fusion of memory and material. Riquelme’s work remains more rooted in the stories embedded in every fiber she reclaims and reimagines.
Textiles as Memory and Medium
Her practice is not driven by sustainability per se, but by the desire to honour what has been used, worn and passed on. In this, her work resonates in a way with that of El Anatsui, whose monumental assemblages made from overlooked materials remind us not only of the “individual memories” embedded in each element, but also serve as aesthetic practices through which one can reflect on the “collective memories” shaped by the passage of time. Like Anatsui, Paula invites one to consider what stories reside in what is dismissed. In her case, it always starts with wool—charged with colour, tradition, and the human touch.
Paula Riquelme’s practice reminds us that materials carry stories—and that through care, attention, and imagination, those stories can be reawakened. Her pieces are not only objects, but encounters: with time, memory, and transformation.
We are proud to present her first solo exhibition in Lisbon, Ser Es, at Haize. This new body of work brings her singular voice into dialogue with our space at 8 Marvila, where each woven piece reveals its own quiet power.
We invite you to come discover Paula’s universe at Haize, from Thursday to Sunday, 12pm to 8pm. Let yourself enter the world she weaves—tender, surprising, and alive with meaning.
