Body mapping of a postpartum experience created by Catalina Alzate.
Meet Catalina
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a Colombian writer, artist, designer, and mother. I work in design and social justice, engaging with reproductive, transformative, and healing justice frameworks. I experiment with ways of bringing the body at the center of how we produce scholarship in design, technology and society.
Briefly explain your artistic practice and/or scholarly research.
I work on design and technology for well-being. My scholarship consists of writing, designing graphic material, participatory interventions and technology projects that take a critical stance towards the representation of bodies in media, and its connections to well-being. Part of this involves exploring parenthood as a cultural construct, and the interrelation of motherhood, labor, and technology. My recent work (in the image) explores individual and collective body mapping dynamics as a form of action-research in the context of postpartum care.
What sparked your interest in this work?
I’ve been working in community-approaches to technology and service design throughout my entire career, initially inspired by the informal economies that shape the Colombian society where I grew up, and now as a response to the increasingly individualistic and consumerist society in the US. I am convinced that as much as design has been crucial to create these realities, it is also crucial in subverting patterns of inequality and injustice.
Body mapping of a postpartum experience created by Catalina Alzate.
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How do you hope your work impacts people?
Impact occurs in many ways. Sometimes it centers on an audience whom I co-create interesting and inspiring pieces of knowledge with. Sometimes it grows with groups of people engaged in participatory work that provides a sense of healing for all of us. My written scholarship hopefully inspires other designers and thinkers, and my more artistically-inclined work is often the seed for conversations, as they make accessible the knowledge produced in academia to the wider public.
What is your favorite or informal way or space to engage with arts and culture in your community?
I enjoy visiting second-hand bookshops, looking for rare visual material that can motivate my thinking and/or be used for collage and scan-art.
