Catherine Restrepo

Visual Design Manager

Catherine Restrepo, MSHP, is the Visual Design Manager at the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment. She holds a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Tulane University and a professional degree in Architecture and Urbanism from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia.

Catherine brings over 15 years of experience in graphic design, photography, editorial production, and video post-production. She began her career in Colombia, working as an illustrator, editorial designer, and photographer for major national publications, including El Tiempo, Lecturas Dominicales, Revista Cambio, Revista Semana, Revista Número, and CEET–Dorling Kindersley (Colombia and the United Kingdom). She also worked in post-production for Teleset, one of Colombia's largest commercial television producers, co-owned by Sony Pictures Television International.

Her creative practice includes digital photography, photomontage, and alternative photographic processes such as cyanotype, gum bichromate, salt print, and albumen. She leads randomsearch.co, an independent documentation project that examines material culture in urban environments through a social science lens. Using an ethnographic approach, she photographs real-world spaces as found, without intervention, focusing on the interplay of architecture, human activity, and economic forces. In parallel, her photomontages rework archival fragments and documentary images into compositions that move beyond graphic construction. Through careful synthesis, she evokes mood, tension, and psychological weight, drawing out what often goes unspoken in society. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, and Santa Marta (Colombia), Savona (Italy), and New York City (USA).

Catherine has led academic workshops at several universities in Colombia, including Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Cartagena, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, and Universidad Autónoma del Caribe in Barranquilla. She has collaborated with cultural organizations such as Maldeojo in Cartagena, Pradeia in Bogotá, and the Modern Art Museum of Medellín (MAMM). Her participation in international platforms includes Feria Odeón in Bogotá and multiple editions of Festival Propaganda in Barranquilla. In the United States, she has been invited to lecture at Loyola University New Orleans.