Catalina Schliebener Muñoz

was it a cat i saw

May 8 — June 21, 2025

Reception: Friday, May 9, 6–8PM

New York City: 41 Orchard Street, Lower Level

Olympia is thrilled to present was it a cat i saw, Catalina Schliebener Muñoz’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. This expansive, site-specific presentation includes vinyl cutout murals, textile works, and collages–essential materials to the artist’s ongoing deconstruction of everyday imagery and objects related to childhood. The press release was written by JD Pluecker:

A palindrome appears the same forwards and backwards, and yet, it is only the letters that are duplicated. The exact assemblage of letters in reverse—broken up by different spacing—creates entirely different sounds and meanings across its hinge. A palindrome is a set of letters that reaches a moment in the center when the words seem to slip “through the looking-glass," to use Lewis Carroll's phrase, and emerge on the other side both like and unlike. What does it mean to move close to the mirror, to the point where the reflection reverses—and then, there you are—on the other side, seeing yourself multiple?

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz's new exhibition at Olympia, was it a cat i saw, is a voyage through the looking-glass: a mirrored, dystopian funland, a carnivalesque house of distortions. Composed of one large-scale mural with four pieces titled Coloring Book and an alphabet-like set of collages titled Puzzle Pieces (Alphabet #1), the show continues the artist's reckoning with childhood—a dismembering and re-composition process that has fueled a constant flow of exhibitions in recent years, from the Mattress Factory to the Queens Museum. The collages, murals, and diptychs shown here provide a window into explorations of infancy, Disney iconography, immaturity, sexuality, embodiment, and transness.

In Coloring Book, three palindromic diptychs of deconstructed Disney secondary characters—Minnie, Clarabelle Cow, and Figaro—alongside a single work focused on Goofy, anchor the mural with vinyl cutouts splayed across its surface, tumbling in two overlapping tones. The vinyls used in the mural are made from repurposed materials originally produced in Argentina for a show inspired by Keith Haring's Once Upon A Time installation in the bathroom at the LGBT Center in Manhattan. Indefinitely postponed, the materials find new life here—another break in time that produces something else on the other side. A mirror as rupture, a new beginning. Bits of clothing and body parts become gestures toward something else, repeating familiar iconography while simultaneously undercutting its definitions.

In Puzzle Series, the artist has created 26 reveries, each an experiment within a constrained set of materials (puzzle pieces, graphite, and paper cutouts) and time (nine minutes initially for each piece). The use of puzzle pieces in these works means the puzzle will never be put back together. The complete image is inaccessible, unmade; it cannot be reassembled. The story remains untold. How do we pick up the pieces? How do we make a new alphabet? A new language in the aftermath of rupture?

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz (b.1980), is a Sudamerican, Chilean-born visual artist and educator who works primarily with collage, installation, and murals. Their work draws on images, objects, and narratives associated with childhood and explores gender, sexuality, and class. They earned a Bachelor of Philosophy (2008) and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (2005) from the Universidad de Arte y Ciencias Sociales (ARCIS; Santiago, Chile).

Schliebener Muñoz’s work has been exhibited internationally including solo shows at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2024), Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA (2024), Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, New York, NY (2022, 2016), Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA (2021), HACHE Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017), Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY (2016), CCMATTA Embassy of Chile in Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2015), Fundación Esteban Lisa, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014), CCE-Centro Cultural de España, Santiago, Chile (2011), Galería Balmaceda 1215, Santiago, Chile (2008), among others.

They have shown in group exhibitions at the Colby Museum of Arts, Waterville, Maine (2024), National Academy of Design, New York, NY (2023), Casa del Bicentenario, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023), Children’s Museum of Manhattan, New York, NY (2022), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY (2021), Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (2021), Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY (2019), The Loisaida Center, New York, NY, US (2019), Center for Books Arts, New York, NY (2016), Galería LOCAL, Santiago, Chile (2013), Galería Metropolitana, Santiago, Chile (2012), Galeria Gravura Brasileira, São Paulo, Brazil (2012), Biblioteca de Santiago, Santiago, Chile (2011), Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009), Catalyst Arts, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2007), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Santiago, Chile (2003) among many others.

Schliebener Muñoz is a recipient of the following grants: FONDART Grants (Cultural and Arts Development Fund of the Government of Chile, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009), DIRAC (Board of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Relations of Chile, 2007) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York, NY, 2021, 2024), among others. They also received a Queer Artist Fellowship from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (2017), and an Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Fellowship from the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2018).

Schliebener Muñoz was an In Situ Fellow (2022-2024) at Queens Museum, Queens, NY.

JD Pluecker works with language, that is, a material thing, a thing of life and history. Her undisciplinary work inhabits the intersections of writing, history, translation, art, interpreting, bookmaking, queer/trans aesthetics, non-normative poetics, language justice, and cross-border cultural production. They have translated numerous books from the Spanish, including Antígona González (Les Figues Press, 2016), Trash by Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny (Deep Vellum Press, 2023) and In Defense of Common Life: The Political Thought of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (Common Notions, 2024). JD has published three books of poetry: The Every Wild (Mouthfeel Press, 2024), Grin Go Home / Las provincias internas (Editorial Ultramarina, 2024), and Ford Over (Noemi Press, 2016). In 2019 Lawndale Art Center supported the publication of the artist book, The Unsettlements: Dad. From 2010-2020, she worked as part of the transdisciplinary collaborative Antena Aire and from 2015-2020 with the local social justice interpreting collective Antena Houston. JD edits chapbooks with Ugly Duckling Presse’s Señal series, is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writing Grant, and has exhibited work at Blaffer Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, Project Row Houses, and more.