Catarina Cortesão

Founder & Secretary of General Assembly

Born in Lisbon concluded her studies in Acting and Drama in CITAC (Circulo de Iniciação ao Teatro Académico de Coimbra); and Law degree in prestigious University of Coimbra, Portugal. Photographer and filmmaker early developed her interest in different visual, written, and performing art forms. As well as has worked with international choreographers, and on different fiction projects at the national Portuguese TV station (RTP).

After, she joined the Centre of Photography Studies (CEF - Coimbra, Portugal). Catarina started by developing autobiographical photographic work, focusing on the theme of the city gazed as the performativity place of the Image, exploring in this way new visual aesthetic forms. She was part of alternative creative movements and protagonists of her time in terms of theatre, cinema, architecture and music. A songbook of images enunciated by written reflection and poetic narrative, for which she received several awards. Namely, the Short Story Writing Prize by the University of Coimbra, Portugal; and   “Visão” magazine (Portugal) best photography essay. In the 1990s travelled around Asia, Europe, and the United States of America, gaining life and working experience. In particular, when visited Macau for the very first time in 1993, she started a project series entitled “Pearl River Diaries” still being developed today, had chosen Dinamene for her Alter Ego, which gazes sentimental scenescapes fabulations and memory attachment visuality, by depicting urban cultural ecologies and giving way to engage artistically in other imagery experiences related to the theme of the city. In the realm of Utopia and Dystopia, and in the margins of the age of global visibility, her visual work engages photography and film as the place of time-memory state of being, questioning the boundaries between the real and the constructed reality from the idea of a stage as a dream that will eventually come true, related to the shift of the Anthropocene paradigm at the turn of the twenty-first century.