Interdisciplinary Artist, Music Producer & Creative Director, Atelierista & Cultural Strategist

Catarina Aimée Dahms, known artistically as CATA.PIRATA, is an internationally active interdisciplinary artist, composer, music producer, creative director, artist-educator and cultural strategist. Working across music, performance, visual art, film, participatory education and cultural policy, she develops projects that connect artistic experimentation with collective experience, cultural exchange and social imagination.

Her practice moves fluidly between artistic production, creative learning and cultural strategy. Whether composing music, developing immersive audiovisual experiences, collaborating with children in an atelier, or advising cultural organisations and public institutions, CATA.PIRATA is interested in how people make meaning, how creative processes generate new perspectives, and how the arts can open up possibilities for individual and collective transformation.

As a music producer and performance artist, CATA.PIRATA has built an international career as co-founder, vocalist, songwriter, and creative director of SKIP¨ has released two albums on Crammed Discs and has performed at festivals and venues including Glastonbury, Sónar Barcelona, Lowlands, Pinkpop, SXSW, Vive Latino and Exit Festival. Her multidisciplinary work spans live performance, sound, moving image, installation and storytelling, with artistic presentations at institutions and platforms including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Mediamatic, TENT Rotterdam and Design Center De Winkelhaak in Antwerp. Across her work as an artist, producer and creative director, she has collaborated with organisations and brands including Sony Publishing, NIKE, Red Bull Studios, VICE and DIESEL, alongside cultural and social-impact organisations.

Complementing her own artistic practice, CATA.PIRATA works as an Atelierista and intercultural music educator, bringing an artist’s approach to child-led learning. Informed by Reggio Emilia principles, her educational practice treats the atelier as a space for inquiry, experimentation and collaborative meaning-making. Working across sound, movement, visual arts, storytelling and encounters with natural materials, she creates conditions in which children can follow their own questions, develop ideas through making, and communicate through their many languages. Her work as an artist-educator includes collaborations with cultural institutions and educational settings, connecting contemporary artistic practice with the everyday lives, curiosities and creative agency of children.

CATA.PIRATA also works at the intersection of cultural strategy, policy and public value. As a cultural advisor, she contributes to the evaluation and development of artistic projects, cultural programmes and policy initiatives, bringing together artistic insight, interdisciplinary thinking and an understanding of the wider cultural ecosystem. Her work encompasses cultural funding and assessment, creative project development, cross-sector collaboration and the relationship between culture, education and social change. She is particularly interested in how cultural institutions and creative organisations can nurture more inclusive, imaginative and ecologically responsive futures. CATA.PIRATA is an Advisor in Music & Music Theater for the Amsterdam Funds for the Arts.

Her academic background includes an MA in Visual Performance & Time-Based Arts, a BA in Communication, Advertising & Design Management, and a postgraduate diploma in intercultural music education. Her research has explored the role of interdisciplinary art, communication and design in shaping cultural and behavioural change, including through her theses The Dialectic of Need vs Want: Communicating Towards Sustainability and The Transmedia Artist as Glocal Nomad. These inquiries continue to inform a practice shaped by intercultural exchange, participatory processes, material exploration and an interest in the relationships between creativity, society and the living world.

Her work has been featured in international publications including Dazed & Confused, VICE, ELLE, Vogue Italia, L’Officiel and City Press. Across disciplines, she approaches creativity as both an artistic practice and a way of engaging with the world: a means of connecting people, crossing boundaries and making space for new forms of expression, knowledge and collective possibility.

Currently, she continues to develop her artistic practice as CATA.PIRATA, while working across creative education and cultural strategy, and brings these interconnected fields into dialogue through music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental approaches to learning.

Selected collaborations

Sony Publishing · NIKE · Red Bull Studios · Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam · VICE · Scotch & Soda · Diesel · Monki · Women for Water Partnership · Young In Prison · Mama Cash

Selected exhibitions & presentations

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam · Vondel Pavilion · Mediamatic · TENT Rotterdam · WM Gallery Amsterdam · Design Center De Winkelhaak, Antwerp · Royal Academy of Art, The Hague · Stadsschouwburg Utrecht

Selected music performances

Glastonbury · Sónar Barcelona · The Great Escape · Lowlands · Pinkpop · SXSW · Vive Latino · Exit Festival · Amsterdam Dance Event · Rocking the Daisies · RecBeat

Selected press

Dazed & Confused · VICE · ELLE · Vogue Italia · L’Officiel · City Press · Metro · LINDA. · i-D