About

Paola Idrontino is a multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona. 
She moved to London in 1997 to study art. 
In 2004, she completed a first class BA (Hons) in graphic design at Central Saint Martins College, London.
In 2005, she launched the label Papayapie with the intention of exploring new ways of highlighting and dramatising the natural silhouette of the body using costumes and accessories.
With an underpinning of traditional techniques, she exploits the manipulative properties of fibres and combines them with unexpected and widely contrasting materials, both new and recycled. 

Her passion for storytelling is combined with complex textile arrangements to create costumes inspired by grotesque and otherworldly creatures.

Her photographs express the affection for tales and myths with references to a feminine world that becomes a protective deity of underwater creatures.

Coral bleaching has been a central theme in Paola’s recent work and at the heart lies the focus of creating awareness in what is happening to our world’s oceans, in particular to corals.

Balancing the absurd with the deepest depths, the whimsical with the emotional, her marine inspired anthropomorphic creatures wish to bring into questions the relationship between humans and nature. 

“When we see ourselves as part of nature, we understand that saving nature is really about saving ourselves.”