Claudia Terstappen studied sculpture at the Art Academie Duesseldorf, Germany. She lived and worked in Duesseldorf, London, Barcelona, Hong Kong and New York . Since 2004 she divides her life between Barcelona and Melbourne.

Over many years she investigated the past and present changes relating to place and culture, resulting in two and three-dimensional works including, "sacred places", "culture and identity" and "In the shadow of change". She traveled to Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Indonesia, China, the US, Iceland and Spain to explore traces of ancient and modern belief systems that are strongly linked to the natural world. 

In 2002 her artistic work brought her to Australia. She has since experienced years of drought, floods and record heat waves with vicious bushfires wiping out whole communities. These extreme circumstances caused an important shift in her thinking, prompting a focus on landscapes that might be under immediate threat.

Through lens-based media and sculpture she inquires, but also compels a broader and richer imagination of making sense of cultural patterns and human interventions that shape the diversity and continuity of life.

When working on sculptural works in her studio, like in clay or wood she translates an idea into form with the greatest possible freedom. This can also mean the perception and cultivation of a single moment or a single observation. It is not the subject that matters, but the translation of the subject into abstraction. She wants the works to have an independent existence away from specificity and rather refer to processes or state of beings.

Both bodies of works navigate between natural and cultural forms that interest her. Set between the visible and the imaginary, the works create certain tensions between organisms and abstract structures, remaining open to an infinite net of interpretations. 

Her work is held in collections in Australia, Japan, Spain, Germany, France and the US.