BIO
Katharina Leistenschneider is a Brazilian-German artist based in Cologne.
Her artistic practice was shaped through a two-year mentorship with the Afro-Brazilian interdisciplinary artist, educator, and writer Anna Parisi, who lives and works in New York and holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design. This period provided an important foundation for the development of her artistic language.
Katharina currently works primarily with mineral pigments and earth pigments collected in the forests of Brazil, many of which she gathers herself during her travels. Additional materials enter her practice through an ongoing exchange with Vãngri Kaingáng, from the indigenous ethnic group Kaingáng, also an artist, writer, speaker and educator from Brazil, who shares natural materials from the forest.
Through her work, Katharina engages with questions of memory, transformation and transcendence: personal memories, dreams, symbols, material presence, and ancestral connection through nature open a new space for growth and creation. Compositions move between abstraction and organic natural shapes.
Cologne 2026
CV
EXHIBITIONS
2026
Group Exhibition, Atelier V11, Cologne, Germany
2025
Group Exhibition, "Schlaf mit mir", Atelier V11, Cologne, Germany
Open Studios Cologne, Cologne, Germany
2024
Group Exhibition, "Wir fanden uns in einem Garten", Atelier V11, Cologne, Germany
Open Studios Cologne, Cologne, Germany
2023
Group Exhibition, Atelier V11, Cologne, Germany
Open Studios Cologne, Cologne, Germany
GRANTS & SCHOLARSHIPS
2022
Artist Scholarship "Auf geht's!", Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany
2021
Artist Scholarship "Auf geht's!", Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany
2020
Artist Scholarship "Auf geht's!", Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany
PROGRAMS
2020
Participant, Remix Regendered – Basic Program, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany
2021
Participant, Remix Regendered – Advanced Program, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany
ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
Two-year mentorship with Anna Parisi, Afro-Brazilian interdisciplinary artist, educator, and writer, New York, USA