Born in 1962 in Barcelona, Spain, Catya Plate grew up in Köln, Germany, with her Spanish mother and German father. She earned her fine arts degree at the Werkkunstschule Köln and relocated to New York in 1987 through a Fulbright Scholarship to continue her post-graduate studies at the School of Visual Arts. Her constant travels between Spain and Germany instilled in her an interest and deep appreciation for other peoples and their cultures.

Plate also lived in London for three years and currently resides in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In 1996 she received an Artist in the Marketplace award from the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Exhibitions include "Inner Child: Good and Evil in the Garden of Memories" at the Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ; "Pillow Talk: Small Comforts in Hard Times" at Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Los Angeles; "Dreams & Possibilities" at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY; "Free Play" at the Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY and solo exhibitions at the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum, San Bernardino, CA; Art Resources Transfer, New York, NY; Galerie Elten & Elten, Zürich, Switzerland and Goethe Institut, New York, NY.

Known for her bizarrely fascinating, elaborate art that demonstrates an interesting fusion of her sensual Catalonian soul, her traditionally disciplined German education and her New York experience, Plate's numerous exhibition and installation projects have been written about in The New York Times; The New York Sun; NY Arts Magazine; Neue Zürcher Zeitung; The Standard Times; The Independent and LA Weekly. Her art, which addresses life in an increasingly multicultural, multilingual and surreal world, is represented in numerous private and public collections including The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Museum of Modern Art / Franklin Furnace, New York, NY; New York Public Library, New York, NY; and Museo dei Tarocchi, Bologna, Italy.