Stranger Cat

BIOGRAPHY

Stranger Cat (Cat Martino) is an interdisciplinary artist, vocalist, composer, and sculptor working across music, movement, video, light, and immersive installation. She has recorded and performed her original compositions internationally, collaborating with artists including Sufjan Stevens (3 world tours, albums, Jimmy Fallon Show), The Shins (Saturday Night Live), Sharon Van Etten, Son Lux, and Mark Gardener (Ride). As Stranger Cat, she has opened for artists including Empress Of, Ela Minus, Angel Olsen, Rufus Wainwright, Patrick Watson, and Marissa Nadler, and has also performed alongside Bon Iver, Dave Harrington (DARKSIDE), Patti Smith, and more.

Blending avant-pop, textural ambient soundscapes, layered vocal looping, electronics, and sculptural light, Stranger Cat creates environments integrating sound, performance, video art, technology, and her self-designed, programmed responsive light sculptures. Born of New York's downtown music and performance communities and now based in Miami, her work has been presented locally at Art Basel, Rubell Museum, ICA Miami, Locust Projects, iii Points Festival, Vizcaya, Mad Arts, Live Arts Miami, and beyond.

Martino has appeared from Carnegie Hall to Sydney Opera House, and the mountains of Chile, having performed on the main stages at Coachella, Pitchfork Fest, Outside Lands, and many international venues and festivals. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NPR, FLOOD Magazine, BrooklynVegan, and other publications.

Stranger Cat's debut In The Wilderness was released by Joyful Noise Recordings in 2015. In 2018 she suffered a serious accident that left her wheelchair bound for 6 months. "I worked hard to rehabilitate against odds, then just as I was re-emerging as an artist, COVID hit, halting all again. Miami gave me a new lease on life; the detours deepened my feeling that creating is what I live for, and what I have to give the world." This dark period is celebrated in LP2, Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body In Pieces (2024), where Cat says she dared herself to, “Show your pain, but make it sexy, make it art.”

Stranger Cat is currently in her studio recording new music, building a light sculpture, meditating, or taking a break with her dog Mariah on the beach. 

MORE SELECTED MUSIC + LIGHT WORKS

Reel from Locust Projects 2025, multi-media live vocalist-producer set featuring custom sound reactive light rig

DESCRIPTION: Research for new Sound to Light live arduino responsiveness at 2025 artist residency with Mad Midi Studios… here Stranger Cat builds a new live ambient track in real time, and explores the live light reactiveness.