Artist David Catá Creates Hand-Stitched Memories That Blend Art, Pain, And Memory (10 Pics)
Some artists paint on canvas. Others carve in stone. Spanish artist David Catá chooses something far more intimate and visually striking: he uses his own skin as a medium, stitching portraits, symbols, and landscapes into the palm of his hand with needle and thread. His deeply personal series “Under the Skin” turns memory into material, transforming fleeting moments into raw, stitched tributes. These works are not permanent. After photographing them, Catá removes the threads and allows the wounds to heal, leaving only faint traces behind, both on his body and in the viewer’s mind.
“My work is born from a need to preserve what disappears,” Catá shared in an interview with DeMilked. “Family memory, inherited crafts, the sea, absence, dreams, these inspire me. Embroidering landscapes onto my hand is both a tribute and a symbolic wound.”
Since 2010, Catá has been creating this unique form of autobiographical art. “I’ve been developing a body of work that lives between photography, painting, music, performance, and the body,” he explains. “Over time, I’ve built a personal language rooted in memory, intimacy, and emotional connection.” His stitched portraits are expressions of longing, remembrance, and transformation, combining the physicality of the body with the symbolic thread of memory.
Each artwork begins with a photograph or recollection. “Each embroidered photograph takes between 4 and 5 hours of stitching directly onto my skin,” Catá says. “Then I document it through photography or video. Once the piece is finished, I remove the threads. The mark takes about four weeks to heal. It’s ephemeral, but I like to say it remains in the memory of the skin.”
His work expands beyond still images. In projects like Origen, Catá blends live music and projected visuals in immersive performance pieces that explore grief, healing, and transformation. “My work doesn’t try to offer answers,” he explains. “It offers spaces to inhabit fragility. Each piece is also a question: how do we inhabit memory, how do we sustain ourselves through art, and how, sometimes, stitching becomes a way of resisting.”
Catá’s work lives between tenderness and tension, intimacy and exposure. With thread and skin, he tells stories of those he has loved, lost, or remembered, and invites viewers to reflect on their own connections. His hands bear the traces of emotion, art, and healing, quietly and powerfully stitched into the body.
You can explore more of David Catá’s work on www.davidcata.com or follow him on Instagram at @davidcata.
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