ABOUT
Through thread, color, and layered surfaces, Catalina Pastrana Acosta develops intimate visual diagrams that trace the rhythms of cyclical bodies. Stitching together scientific research, personal observation, and embodied experience, her work transforms fluctuation into a form of knowledge.
Bio
I am a Colombian fiber artist exploring the infradian rhythm as biological structure and lived experience. Rooted in scientific research and personal journaling, my practice traces how hormonal cycles move through the body, shaping sensation, perception, and emotional tone in life-creating bodies.
Working across fiber and painting, I construct layered surfaces where thread and pigment become parallel forces in conversation. Embroidery accumulates into intricate cellular networks while dragged paint introduces interruption and volatility, materials that move through cycles of tension and release, containment and dispersal, echoing the body's own rhythms.
The process demands full bodily engagement. One hand up, one hand down — threading the canvas to build a language of body cells. Stitched lines traverse the surface like vascular systems, forming organic architectures that suggest muscle, membrane, and skin. Color is coded to correspond to hormonal states, allowing tonal shifts to register fluctuation rather than fixity. Paint is then pulled across the canvas, overlapping, dissolving, vanishing, mirroring the instability so often attributed to cyclical bodies.
Each stitch and gesture becomes part of a living surface where forms emerge and recede. These works are intimate diagrams of cyclical embodiment, where fluctuation is not instability but a form of embodied intelligence.
Artist Statement
Catalina Pastrana Acosta is a Colombian artist living and working between New York and Medellín. Working between painting and fiber, she creates textile-based works that examine how cyclical transformations within the body shape perception, emotion, and lived experience.
Drawing from scientific research, personal observation, and textile traditions, Pastrana Acosta has developed a visual language in which color, thread, and layered surfaces operate as systems for recording bodily rhythms and states of change. Through embroidery, painting, and constructed textile processes, she builds dense compositions where accumulation, repetition, and material tension become tools for exploring embodied experience.
Originally trained in fashion design before pursuing fine arts, her interdisciplinary background informs a practice that moves fluidly between structure and gesture, research and intuition, material investigation and personal narrative.
Pastrana Acosta received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2023, where she was awarded the Dana Pond Award and the SMFA Dean’s Research Award. Her work has been exhibited in venues including Pace Gallery in New York, MassArt x SoWa, and the Aidekman Arts Center in Boston. Her work is held in private collections throughout the United States and Latin America, as well as in the collection of Tufts University Art Galleries.
For exhibitions, collaborations, and available works, please visit the Contact page.
You are also welcome to download my CV directly.