Catherine Tafur was born in Lima, Peru in 1976 to a Peruvian father and a Japanese mother. After spending the first part of her childhood in Peru and the latter part in Wilmington, Delaware, she moved to New York City to study at the Cooper Union School of Art where she earned her BFA. The artist has since shown her work at venues throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. Tafur’s work uses the image of the body as a way to explore ideas of gender deconstruction, confrontational sexuality, disillusionment and loss of innocence. She transforms personal experiences into allegorical works of poetic representational symbolism, often through painful disfigurements, idealized androgyny, and mutilation. She now lives and works in New York City and is an artist-in-residence at the Brooklyn Artists Gym.