Yohanna M Roa

I am a visual artist, curator, art historian, art critic and archivist, with a feminist-decentralized approach and archival perspectives. My practices aim to provoke changes in how we reflect, organize, and write about the past, particularly in the history of art and our bodies. Being a woman constitutes a specific political and social framework within this historical-conceptual construction that shapes my worldview. My work focuses on activating decolonial processes, aiming to recover and highlight memories, knowledge, and even the hidden or obscured bodies in the processes of writing history. Traditionally, women have transmitted knowledge through oral traditions and teaching in everyday spaces such as cooking or sewing.

I define my artistic practice under the concept of "activist fabrics," where textile practices serve as feminist political action devices. I am interested in highlighting that everyday activities and spaces, such as food, decoration, and caregiving, are arenas for rescuing stories connected to socially significant events. These spaces and memories enable me to explore the connections between personal experiences and socio-political structures, demonstrating that spaces often perceived as individual and disconnected are in fact social and structural.

Yohanna M Roa is a transcultural-feminist visual artist, art historian, and art critic based in New York. Ana Tejeda Gallery represents her; she is the curator and program developer of WhiteBox NYC, and the Editor in chief of INES_Magazina. She holds a Ph.D. in the History and Critical Theories of Art program from the Universidad Iberoamericana, México, where she graduated Cum Laude with her thesis. She has an MA in Women and Gender Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center, an MA in Visual Arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the Departmental Institute of Fine Arts of Colombia, a meritorious thesis. Her most recent solo performance occurred at The Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid in 2024. Her artistic work has been studied, published, and discussed by various scholars and publications, including Karen Cordero for the 109th CAA Annual Conference in 2021, in "Revaluing Feminine Trajectories and Stitching Alternative Genealogies in the Work of Yohanna Roa," and Natalia De la Rosa in "Yohanna M Roa, Textile Woman," published in Casa del Tiempo Magazine, among others. Yohanna has been recognized with the Young Creators Award from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, and her work is part of the permanent collection of the Tlatelolco Cultural Center in Mexico City. She collaborates regularly with Art Nexus and WhiteHot Magazine. She has had lectures at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Mexico and the Latin American Public Art Seminar. She has curated projects and educational art and archive projects for institutions, including the National Center of Art Research (CENIDIAP) in Mexico and the Tertulia Museum of Modern Art in Colombia. She is the curator and program developer of WhiteBox NY. In addition, she has served as a jury member for events such as Wienwoche: Festival of Art and Activism in Vienna, Austria, in 2024, the Money for Women Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund in the USA in 2024 and Liu Shiming Art Foundation Grants for Artists, 2024, NYC.

As an artist, I have extensive experience teaching at different levels and fields related to art. I have worked with children, youth, and adults of different ages. My experience includes hand-made fanzines of personal and community memories, dialogue and self-recognition textiles, community-based public mural projects, and introductory, basic and advanced workshops in art history, which may include visits to museums or tours of historic places. I have been a teacher of workshops in neighborhoods and communities, also at the bachelor's and master's levels.