Today we’d like to introduce you to Catalina López
Hi Catalina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Ever since I can remember, I have had a special taste for experimenting with shapes, textures, and the smells of materials. I enjoyed creating spaces to play out the characters from our childhood games with whatever was around me. As time went by, exploration found fine motor skills, the example of which was the manual work of my mother and grandmothers. As a child, while I was in a space, I would redistribute objects, adopt a wardrobe and arrange lights that I would dress in colors with some translucent material, which would illuminate us when we sang and danced, I would compose and inhabit, as long as possible, those scenarios. I liked to classify and organize the materials that I found useful to express myself with my hands. I liked giving my grandfather’s typewriter a new use, and getting to have my own. Writing by hand at night, during my days.
Formal education and all the programs in which I have participated have contributed to a process of disciplinary formation and unlearning, crossed by aesthetics, by that choice to compose a new world, to give space to appeal to the senses and discover ourselves in the magic of experiencing something different despite what it may be, of letting oneself be inhabited and inhabiting beauty.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I like to experiment, explore, and not go the conventional route. My degree at university was making paths from reusing glass bottles from the trash. So making paths is an activity with a different speed and activated senses. And of course, it has many risks, especially the risk of getting lost! and also the safety of finding treasures. When I have stopped paying attention to myself, when walking becomes mechanical and my sense of surprise diminishes, when I get distracted by mirages, I forget that I am a walker, that I chose to do what I like, that I am not enjoying my scenery.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I have a degree in ephemeral architecture and I work in the creation of other worlds. I meet my need for expression using the techniques and materials I have at hand to compose works that give new meaning to the uses, forms, and meanings we usually give to things, beings, and the relationships between them. With my partner, Samuel Córdoba, I direct Fundación Promedio and in that union we enhance the talents and individual exercise of each one, and we convene collectives of manual work and reusing materials, to develop commissions that, through art, architecture, and design, generate interactions between us and with nature that restore us.
I am proud to be able to work in what I like, to convene the world of possibility and to choose to inhabit beauty with the resources available.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was curious, observant, and stubborn. I concentrated a lot on the tasks I did. I liked to learn, learn a lot of things. I dedicated myself. I suggested games and found a way to pass the time with what was in each place. Singing, dressing up, drawing, riding a bike, listening to music, writing, were my favorite activities. As a teenager I liked to make bonfires and listen to music to see the stars, I painted stickers, t-shirts, and corks that I sold to save up and buy what I had in mind. I surrounded myself with friends who wanted to do things different from what other young people did.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.fundacionpromedio.com
- Instagram: @fundacionpromedio
- Facebook: Fundación Promedio
