Resident Interview | Catalina Aranguren

Interviewed by Kate Gorman | Recorded September 2021

In the second installment of our cohort interviews, Kate Gorman interviewers fellow Artist in Residence Catalina Araguren. Catalina discusses her upcoming Walk-Bye, a community art project in Jersey City she is single-handedly organizing, and her photography practice.

Catalina Aranguren was born in Bogotá, Colombia. At the age of 5 her parents moved and she was raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She studied K - 12th at the International School there. Growing up, her friends were from everywhere in the world; religion, race, culture and language were not things she was aware of as differences … for her, these things did not define people, it was merely a part of where they came from.

Catalina’s childhood was a constant wavering between languages, cultures, and third and first worlds, on a daily basis. At home, she would sit around the dining table and speak Spanish with her parents, turn, and speak in English to her sister. Catalina moved to Chicago to study photography and design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her BFA. Before she graduated, she did a semester in Europe at the Spéos Photographic Institute in Paris, France.

She is currently raising three bilingual, bicultural, biracial and bustling boys in Spain with her husband and their giant dog.