Bio

Catherine Villalonga is a Queer Cuban-American interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural worker based in Tequesta, Seminole, and Miccosukee land, Miami, Florida. They hold an Associate degree in Arts from Miami Dade College and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Technology from New World School of the Arts and the University of Florida with a minor in Art History.

As an artist, they alchemize color, story-telling, and composition to manifest dreamscapes of potential futures, emphasizing the urgency to retrieve a right relationship with the land–with queer and trans folk at the center. They work with digital illustration, animation, and printmaking.

Artist Statement
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My practice explores the ways in which Queer and Trans people are in intrinsic linkage with the earth. This is framed in my work geopolitically by the crises that Miami’s people face; a city on the frontlines of a housing and climate crisis–inches above water. The same systems that oppress queer people also exploit our natural world, and thus, returning to the earth in the fight for self-determination is indispensable. Collaborating with local organizers and artists, I aim to create imagery that incites collective consciousness and nurtures dreaming by depicting tangible portrayals of new worlds.

I often make flyer-based work, creating signage for community events, protests, and spaces of play–where queer bodies flourish in acts of resistance. The nature of this work is communicative and accessible, and consequently, primarily figurative. In addressing these issues I merge illustrated dreamscapes of whimsical, queer bodies in lush environments with a research-based process that explores Florida and Caribbean indigenous plant and animal life. This, alongside centered and dynamic compositions, not only serves to contextualize my work geographically but underscores the innateness of the linkage. Informed by the story-telling of artists such as Belkis Ayón, Ana Mendieta, and Manuel Mendive, I draw from my Cuban heritage and use figurative imagery and composition as a conduit for communication.

 I primarily work with vibrant colors reminiscent of Miami and the Caribbean that act as visual signifiers by tapping into shared cultural memory. Color is a powerful tool that tells stories and weaves language of resistance into images by preserving and elevating diasporic cultures–we see this archived across Miami's landscape. Apart from using bright, saturated colors symbolically, I also employ color as a channel to depict the magic that encapsulates Queer identity. Alchemizing figurative imagery, color, and composition, I am to conjure worlds where marginalized bodies–with an emphasis on queer and trans people–can move and love freely under the sun.