Catalina Renjifo is a visual artist and practice based researcher interested in artistic epistemologies and intercultural pedagogies. Her work deconstructs meaning making and communication, investigating mechanisms of knowledge transfer and understanding through the materials and actions she performs. 

By materialising the enquiry, giving form to learning and questioning and sharing the cognitive process of making, the aim is to shift perceptions of knowing and reveal the underlying injustice of knowledge power structures. Catalina’s interests are shaped by the multiple cultural identities she inhabits, from the colonial and post-colonial obliterations and miscegenation of Latin American culture, the realities and escapism of the art, music and politics of the violent times she grew up in, the constant renegotiation between otherness and belonging. 

Describing her practice as digestive in method, research based in methodology and pedagogical in outlook, it involves breaking down, dissolving, and uniting contradictory materials to absorb and assimilate what is learnt in the process. This in turn guides the choices in presenting the artworks, enabling the encounter of other bodies and their own cultural knowledge. 

Each artwork formulates a question and as a final piece, the specific formulation of process and materials embodies the enquiry. Her interest in artistic epistemologies affirms the cognitive nature of aesthetic experience and her aim is to widen the perception of how we come to know.

Current strategies of engagement are reviewed and deployed as embedded pedagogies, both in exhibited works and in the ways of teaching others.

 

 

Upcoming exhibitions

 

12 - 23 June 2024 Thought Forms, 571 Gallery, Reading

1-9 June - INC, Manchester Oxford Print exchange with Reveal Printmakers

11-19 May - Artweeks at MRS

1 - 30 May -  Artsauce at Common Ground

 

Solo Exhibitions

 

2018 Whose Voice? - Featured Artist, Magdalen Road Studios, Oxford

2018 Onset, Icons, NOC Gallery, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford

2017 Undercurrents, Filament 14, Magdalen Road Studios, Oxford

 

Selected Exhibitions

 

2023 INC Print Exchange, HotBed Press, Manchester

2023 Ritual, A Hidden Spire Collective project, Old Fire Station, Oxford

2023 Unseen Workers: the essential roles of microbes, art and science event, Oxford Town Hall

2023 18 Artists, Artweeks 2023, Magdalen Road Studios

2023 Latent: From Our Archives, PhotoOxford Festival

2021 Living Networks of Gentle Impact for 'From the Ground Up', Old Fire Station, Oxford

2021 Untitled (game), 2021 for the event 'Can the Arts Support Climate Action?', Fusion Arts, Oxford

2020 ‘A Dangerous Field’: Women, Artists and the Photographic Image, Photo Oxford, online exhibition

2020 She Performs The Body, Glass Tank, Oxford2019 Turn of the Year, Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot

2019 CommUnity, Print Exchange Exhibition, Wolfson College, Oxford

2019 Body Language, Ovada Gallery

2019 Priceless, Artweeks at Magdalen Road Studios, Oxford

2019 Chromantics, Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot

2019 SocioParasitologyManifesto Exhibition, The Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, London 

2017 ReMARKS, Ovada Gallery

2017 Beyond Surface, Glass Tank, Oxford

2017 Seven Counties Open, Ovada Gallery

2017 Healing Forces - Artist Teacher Collective - NOC Gallery, Oxford

2016 Art on the Move - The Jam Factory, Oxford

2016 Evolving Forces - Artist Teacher Collective - Glasgow Room, Oxford Brookes University

2016 DisLocate - Artists from Magdalen Road Studios, Old VW Garage, Oxford

2016 Realisation, Pop Up Artist Teacher Collective, Oxford Brookes University

2016 Resistant Forces - Artist Teacher Collective - Ovada Gallery, Oxford

2015 Artist Teacher Scheme End of year, Oxford Brookes University

2002 Tunnel of Love - Valentines Show, Brooklyn, NY

2000 Monoprints - Museo de Barranquilla, Colombia

2000 Maluca - MFA Degree Show - Bogota, Colombia

1999 Reflections on National Salon Prize Winners - MAMBO, Bogota

1999 Colombian Contemporary Artists - CIC Gallery, Chicago.

1998 Masters of Graphic Arts - International Printmakers Exhibition, Gyor, Hungary

1997 Realms of Sight - Drawings, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota

1997 Arte Plop - Murals, Avenida Jimenez Underground, Bogota Colombia

 

Press

Artists Recognize the Benefits of a Parasite-Host Relationship - Hyperallergic 

Artist Spotlight - She Performs

 

Publications

2013 Revista Matera, magazine contributor, Bogota
1999 Asterisco #3 Galeria Sextante, Bogota
1999 Solo Dibujo – Book – collective drawing book participant

 

Education

Oxford Brookes University, MA in Education, with Distinction 2015 – 2017
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Master in Fine Arts, 1994 – 2000