Dutch-Indonesian artist Gladys Paulus (b. 1973) works at the intersection of fine art and traditional crafts. Her practice is rooted in exploring the ancestral and emotive power of materials. Drawing on her ongoing inquiry into identity and lineage, she uses textiles as vessels of memory, transformation, and quiet resistance. Her work often emerges from slowness, using the tactile language of sheep’s wool and hand-making to honour what has been forgotten, unspoken, marginalised, or repressed. 

Paulus's practice is rooted in her personal explorations of her own identity as a queer person of mixed heritage, a descendant of refugee migrants, as well as her meditation and embodiment practices. Her creative practice weaves together elements of the past with the present, creating works that are both a dialogue with history, and a meditation on her own place within it. She sees the act of making as an act of restoration; to make visible the invisible, and the past that has shaped us. Not simply to venerate it, but to question it, understand its impact on the present, and learn from it.

​

Felt, with its primal tactility and ancient lineage, allows her to blur boundaries between art, craftsmanship and the contemplative aspects of ritual; somewhere between object and offering. Felt is thought to predate woven textile, and is intimately linked to our place within the landscape, and to our very survival as a species. The techniques of wet felting have remained the same in essence to this day. In exploring wool’s capacity to hold memory and emotion, Paulus stretches it into new dimensions, creating pieces that do not merely exist as objects but rather as vessels for experience, reflection, and transformation. 

​She sees her pieces as acts of defiance against the erosion of mystery, beauty and sacredness in modern life. In a world that often prioritizes speed, utility, and superficiality, her practice stands as a reminder of slowness, reverence, and the value of ritual. To felt is to connect, to merge disparate strands. She extends this notion to bring together the opposing cultures forces that have shaped her own life, while simultaneously questioning and reinterpreting them. This is where her work thrives: In the in-between, the belonging and not belonging, the sacred and the profane, the personal and the universal.

A fourth generation artist and maker, Paulus currently lives and works in Somerset, England. She is a specialist visiting tutor across the UK, Europe, USA and Canada, a former exhibiting member of the 62 Group of textile artists and she is on the Crafts Councils Selected Index of Makers. Her work is represented in the collection of the World Museum (Amsterdam), and private collections in the USA, Canada and the UK.

​

A CV is available on request.

​

Photo reportage & interview by Together&Sunspell October 2017