Carla Castiajo works within different artistic areas.
She uses materials to communicate her ideas, as the materials have their own attributes and cultural and symbolic nature, incorporate meanings and can create and establish different dialogues.
Over the last few years, she has often used human hair as a material. The usage of hair, as a material, can cause different, often contradictory, reactions – attraction and repulsion, for example.
Her intention is to use hair as a means of expression capable of absorbing and representing reflections of our time and in making the meanings and contradictions of hair productive.
Carla Castiajo concluded a PhD in 2016, from the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia, with a scholarship from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), 2011–2015.
The subject of her artistic research was “Purity or Promiscuity? Exploring Hair as a Raw Material in Jewellery and Art”. She completed a master’s degree in Fine Arts in 2006, from the Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden, with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2005–2006 and has a Degree in Art and Design, completed in ESAD, in Matosinhos, Portugal in 2003.
At moment teaches at Lusófona university, Porto, Portugal. She taught at different Universities in different countries, such as the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia, the College of Art and Design in Matosinhos, Portugal, the Beaconhouse National University (BNU) in Lahore, Pakistan.
She has taken part in artist residencies such as A.I.R., Trier University of Applied Sciences, Campus for Design and Art, Department of Gemstones and Jewellery, Idar-Oberstein, Germany; Nida Art Colony, Nida, Lithuania; and the Rede de Residências: Experimentation in Art, Science and Technology Program, Department of Polymer Engineering – 3B’s (Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics), University of Minho, Portugal.
Her work has been exhibited regularly in different solo and group exhibitions in various countries.