Yinna Higuera
Ecuador
Biography
Yinna Higuera (Bogotá, 1980) is a Colombian-Ecuadorian visual artist and photographer whose work intertwines memory, the body, migration, and territory. Her practice draws on experimentation with the image, ranging from documentary photography to alternative processes that create spaces for reflection and dialogue on identity and belonging.
She has exhibited her work in over 40 national and international exhibitions across Latin America, the United States, and Europe, including Somerset House (London), Arles, Paris, New York, Bogotá, Santiago, Quito, and Buenos Aires. Series such as Dualidades Migrantes, Chushak, and Huellas reveal her interest in fragility and resilience, the tensions between the intimate and the collective, and the visible and invisible traces that traverse bodies and territories.
As co-founder of Colectivo SolipsisArt Ecuador, she promotes creation and exhibition processes from community and gender perspectives. Her career positions photography as a tool for memory, healing, and resistance, building bridges between art and society.
With a background in Psychology, Pedagogy, and a Master’s in Photography and Society in Latin America (University of the Arts, Ecuador), Yinna researches the relationships between image, archive, and collective transformation processes, reaffirming art as a vital act of encounter and resistance.
Project
Huellas
This project captures the relationship of women with the land and consists of portraits of rural Ecuadorian women, printed using plant-based photosensitivity on banana, cacao, coffee leaves, as well as vegetables and herbs from home gardens—plants that accompany their daily work in Ecuadorian fields. Since pre-Columbian times, women have had an energetic connection with the earth, as bearers of life, and have always been considered sacred. The different cultures that developed here, such as the Valdivia, sought through their sculptures to express the divinity of women and the value of their presence for the development of the community.
This technique allows me to show the symbiosis between women and the land, and how both the women and what they cultivate leave a mark on each other. This relationship, often overlooked due to the immediacy of city life, is revealed to the eyes of those who take the time to engage with each portrait. The texture of the leaves will always reflect the imprint of a delicate story crafted over generations.
Statement
As a visual artist and photographer, my creative practice is deeply influenced by my background in psychology and pedagogy, integrating a perspective nourished by both art and the science of human behaviour. My passion lies in documentary and artistic photography, which I use as a vehicle to explore and represent social situations involving human emotions, gender dynamics, and the complex relationship between people and their natural environment.
