Catia Alfonso
Catia Alfonso is a Fourth Year Fine Art student at the University of Pretoria, born and raised in Kempton Park, Gauteng. Catia was awarded the Hillensburg Trust Bursary for the year 2018-2020.
Catia uses art as a means to navigate through, understand, and often challenge her believe system. Her strict upbringing in the Roman Catholic Church has had an extensive impact on her as a person, as well as an artist. Catia explores the feelings of anxiety and guilt that stem from being a practicing Catholic woman, more specifically the feelings attached to the acts of confession and contrition. As an artist, she started to explore these emotions through sculpture and videography. Her work transforms Catholic objects into objects that would cause discomfort as well as self-reflection in their viewers. Her practice ultimately explores the boundaries between sinful and holy as well as the area in-between. The process of making is a personal one for Catia as she uses herself as the confessor of her own sins. She notes that confessing to her own sins has been both therapeutic and difficult. Videography, according to Catia, has allowed her to enter an alternative universe, one in which she is allowed to choose her own belief system.
