Kat Sotelo is a first-generation Filipino American performance artist, choreographer, and set designer whose practice blends movement, satire, and constructed environments. She explores the body as a site of commerce, often using her experience in “exotic” dance to examine fantasy and cultural hybridity. As a film industry professional, Sotelo’s compositions also integrate elements of cinema to create layered realities. Her current body of work focuses on eroticism and servitude through a Filipino American lens – at the intersection of nostalgia, rage, and melancholy. By weaving video, personal archives, and Philippine folk traditions, she critiques the commodification of art and identity with humor and pop compositions. Sotelo currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

A Filipino woman in front of a red tractor draped with fish netting leans forward with arms folded over her lap, wet hair slicked around her face, and a forlorn expression. She wears a head piece with charms and jewels, blue cascading floral earrings, long polka-dotted formal gloves, and a traditional Philippine dress airbrushed with Gumby surfing a wave. Photo by Akasha Rabut.
ID: A Filipino woman in front of a red tractor draped with fish netting leans forward with arms folded over her lap, wet hair slicked around her face, and a forlorn expression. She wears a head piece with charms and jewels, blue cascading floral earrings, long polka-dotted formal gloves, and a traditional Philippine dress airbrushed with Gumby surfing a wave. Photo by Akasha Rabut.