Catarina LEITÃO (1970)

Catarina Leitão was born in Stuttgart in 1970. She is Portuguese and lives and works in New York. Leitão graduated in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Art of the University of Lisbon and completed her Master of Fine Art Degree at Hunter College, Cuny, New York.

Leitão has exhibited her work in group shows since 1989. Her work gained recognition in 1996 with the solo exhibition Acerca da Solidão dos Objectos (Concerning the Solitude of Objects) at Arte Periférica Gallery. Other exhibitions, like ARD Artificial Retreat Devices, Sintra Museum of Modern Art (2001) and Natureza Domesticada (Tamed Nature), CAMJAP, Lisbon (2002), deserve to be singled out. In 2002, Catarina Leitão participated in an exhibition at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York consisting of several pieces that had already been exhibited at the CAMJAP: sculptural objects made of green and brown felt, sewn and stuffed for an installation that comments on the provision of green zones in large cities. The use of camouflage fabrics introduced the themes of war and hiding, artificialness and the unnatural, and our indifference concerning the consumption of forests. Several drawings and water colour paintings on paper also relate to these issues.

A series of tents comprised the exhibition held in Sintra, in 2001. The installation invited the observer to enter the tents individually (Bed Tent, Desert Tent, Forest Tent, Camouflage Tent…), to lie down and take in through sight, sound and smell the escapist experience each tent proposed.

One of these tents, the Lazy Dress Tent, and the huge jacket, exhibited at the CAMJAP, refer to the condition of shelter and homelessness which her final MFA project at Hunter College had already established: The Body in The Garment in The Furniture in The Room.

In previous exhibitions, Leitão dealt with the conditions of maintaining and serialising the sculptural nature of objects by working every detail and de-contextualising the vestiges of a past existence with her drawings and installations.

Selva Confortável (Comfortable Jungle), a sculpture made with lianas – a twining tropical plant created by suspending great rolls – created a habitat where the human presence, evoked by the bench, was surprisingly unpredictable. Selva Confortável was donated to the CAMJAP.

The theme of how nature and culture clash and burst into each other appears in different ways in each of the exhibition’s sculptures and drawings. In the five drawings acquired by the CAMJAP, objects like a bag, shirt, tent, basin, bathtub or fan integrate the miniaturised natural elements that evoke the circumscription and “human” configuration which shapes them in urban contexts.

Catarina Leitão recently developed a project that comprises a series of large graphite and aquarelle drawings, portraying a fictional catalogue of products for open-air activities which includes survival kits used by the army and in anti-terrorist defence. The relationship between a form of nature mediated by consumption and environmental concerns remain central.

LEONOR NAZARÉ