Paula Bosco is an Argentine textile artist creating with an environmental consciousness. For us, her work transmits a kind of knowledge and feminine energy. In our conversation, she shared her shift from a career in fashion to a career as an artist, but more than that, an introspective process to find and connect with her authentic essence, something that she also transmits and shares through her artworks. 

Repose: Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to start this project?

Paula: I’m from Córdoba. I studied at university in Rosario, a degree that I never practiced and never really connected with. At that time, I had always liked fashion, so I started to get more involved in it. So in parallel I started with fashion, and that’s when I began working as a designer for my own brand. This inspiration comes from my family, I grew up surrounded by fabrics, patterns, embroidery. My grandmother is a seamstress, she and her sisters made clothes for the whole family, and that stayed with me, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

I had a clothing brand in Córdoba for five years. After that I worked for other brands as a designer and pattern maker, and I felt that it wasn’t giving me satisfaction anymore.

Repose: What made you shift away from fashion?

Paula: I felt that I still wanted to work with textiles, but in a more manual way. Fashion is an industry that moves super fast, always living in the future, always thinking ahead, and that completely threw me off. I was also very young, and sustaining the whole structure of a brand, producing in quantities,it got a bit out of hand. I wasn’t prepared, and I wasn’t enjoying it. So I said, okay, this is not the moment.

And that’s when I decided to go to London to study textile design at Central Saint Martins. It was a dream. It was an intensive, not a full degree, but a specialization focused on textile design and screen printing. That was in 2017, and that’s where everything started to shift, where I began redefining where my creative search was going.

Repose: What changed for you during that time?

Paula: I finished the course and started doing internships in screen printing studios, unpaid, just helping. During that time, both in the course and in the studios, I started noticing how many chemicals were used in production. I would wash the screens and see all the paint going down the drain, hardening there, and I thought this is crazy. Even just being told you have to wear a mask and gloves made it feel unhealthy. So I started wondering if there was a way to do the same thing but in a more sustainable, more responsible way. That’s when I entered the world of natural dyes.

At the same time I was going through a personal and spiritual process. I felt a need to communicate what I was feeling to the world, my way of seeing things, of questioning why things are the way they are, of connecting with something ancestral. I don’t know where it came from, but it felt like a calling. Maybe it sounds a bit mystical, but it was a need to transmit knowledge, like from indigenous communities. I don’t know why I connect with that, but I do.

Repose: And now, how would you describe your work?

Paula: From a technical side, it’s about reinterpreting ancestral knowledge with a contemporary perspective. My pieces are not just objects, they are meant to be experienced. I see them as something like portals or relics, something you have in your space that helps you reconnect with the earth.

Repose: You mentioned doubts about being an artist, how did you deal with that?

Paula: I had a lot of doubts because I hadn’t studied art. I kept asking myself what I was going to do, how I could be an artist without having studied it. I come from a completely different background. So I started doing inner work to clear those limiting thoughts. I even did an Akashic records session, and the woman told me that in a past life I had been a medicine woman in the Peruvian jungle working with plants. Maybe she was right, maybe not, but for me it made sense. It gave me confidence and helped me recognize myself in that path.

Repose: How did you find your artistic language?

Paula: I started connecting that with my family heritage, the fabrics, embroidery, everything I knew how to do. Because I don’t know how to paint or draw. What I know is how to work with plants, create colors, manipulate textiles, cut, sew, embroider. So I asked myself, what is my language? And that’s when I discovered it. That’s when everything started to take shape, and I began to take myself seriously as an artist.

Repose: Were you sharing your work from the beginning?

Paula: No, I was always making things, but I was very afraid to show them. I didn’t feel validated. I made my first works and eventually shared them, and shortly after a gallery from Los Angeles contacted me through Instagram and said they wanted to work with me. I couldn’t believe it. I had so much fear, and showing my work ended up being worth it. It reassured me that I was on the right path.

Repose: When did you start structuring your practice more seriously?

Paula: At that time I still had another job, related to the art world but not creative. I worked from home and didn’t have a studio, so it was hard to produce consistently. I realized I needed structure, a rhythm, to create regularly. It was difficult because I was living abroad, and I had to support myself, pay rent, buy materials. So I started questioning if I was really doing what I had come there to do.

It was a big identity shift. I had to let go of the idea of a traditional career and accept a completely different way of living.

I loved London for the opportunities, but I felt completely disconnected from nature, from myself. The pace of life was overwhelming, and it contradicted everything my work stood for. I had to choose between staying there under pressure or going back to Argentina, where I had more support and less stress. So in 2024, I returned.

Repose: Do you feel your project has evolved since you started?

Paula: The essence hasn’t changed at all. If anything, I try to stay even more aligned with it. The challenge is that my work doesn’t fit the constant production rhythm of social media or the market. 

Repose: Do you have contact with the people who buy your work?

Paula: No, everything goes through galleries. I have contact with them, and sometimes they tell me where a piece will go, but often I don’t know. It’s a strange feeling.

Repose: Do you struggle with balancing creativity and business?

Paula: Yes, all the time. There are many aspects, communication, finances, organization. I try to have a routine: mornings for administrative work, afternoons for creating. But it’s also important to do nothing sometimes, because that’s when ideas come.

I like to think this balance as feminine and masculine energy. The feminine is creativity and flow, the masculine is structure and order. Both are necessary.

Repose: Do you experience creative blocks?

Paula: Yes, often. When that happens, I go back to the beginning, why I do what I do. I look for inspiration, watch documentaries, reconnect.

Repose: What would you tell yourself at the beginning of this journey?

Paula: To stay true to my essence. To always ask why I’m doing what I’m doing. That’s my compass. If something feels wrong, it probably is.

Repose Archive is a creative direction journal documenting processes and projects across art, design, architecture, and hospitality. As designers, we interview creative minds and explore their creations.  Photography credits: Paula Bosco.