Processes of construction, adaptability, and hybridity shape an artistic practice through which Catarina proposes that human and nature, artifice and nature, culture and nature exist in continuity. Moving between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, the artificial and the natural, the assembling and disassembling, her spatial thinking sustains a sculptural language articulated through installation, drawing, and the artist’s book.

Represented by Galeria Carlos Carvalho since 2012, she has exhibited her work in a wide range of contexts. In New York, her work has been shown at P.S.1/MoMA, Socrates Sculpture Park, Andrea Rosen Gallery, Michael Steinberg, and the Bronx Museum; as well as at The Aldrich Museum (CT). She has held solo exhibitions at Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian e na Coleção Berardo-Sintra. Her distinctions include fellowships and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2009), Center for Book Arts (2007), Triangle Arts (2006), Sharpe Foundation (2004), LMCC (2003), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2001), and support from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Fundação Luso-Americana (1997–99).

Leitão holds a PhD from the College of Arts, University of Coimbra (2022); an MFA from Hunter College, New York (2000); and a painting degree from FBAUL (1993). She taught at ESAD.CR–IPL (2011–24), was a member of LiDA, and has been teaching at the College of Arts, University of Coimbra since 2024.