Kato Herbots (BE, 2001) is a product designer and researcher with a material-driven design approach. Her practice challenges anthropocentric preconceptions and explores alternative scenarios by critically examining the relationships between human, materials and context.
With an approach that is both sensitive and situated, she explores how materials and objects are embedded in larger ecological, social and temporal networks, and how they can be altered to actively intervene in these.
Her work is driven by a keen curiosity about the human-nonhuman systems that shape our world. This manifests across a range of topics, including invasive ecologies, infrastructures of waste, and human relationships with environmental actors such as the sun.
Kato is currently a PhD candidate within the Unfolding Ecologies Research Cluster at LUCA School of Arts (Genk).