Livia Papiernik is a mixed media textile artist whose ambition is to expand into large-scale image-making and sculptural work. She makes hand embroidery and felt pieces that draw on British folklore and landscape, exploring themes of identity, memory, and emotional resilience. She approaches embroidery beyond its traditional delicacy, combining fine technique with expressive mark-making.
Her QEST Scholarship will allow her to train with Liz Clay, who creates hand felted textiles for haute couture, as well as sculptural felting with artist Marjolein Dallinga at her studio, Bloomfelt. Gaining skills in felt will help her create powerful forms at the architectural scale for galleries, clients and institutions. To complement these, she’ll also learn natural and locally derived dyeing processes with Hampshire based studio, Elka Textiles.
Livia’s goal is to create site-responsive works and immersive installations, reigniting the value and significance that textile craft held in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since completing her MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art in 2021, she’s worked with a number of brands, taught at the Royal School of Needlework, and cofounded BOUND, a gallery platform for promoting embroidery as an art form.
