—A yogi who through perfect meditation has merged his consciousness with the Creator perceives the cosmic essence as light; for him there is no difference between the rays of light that make up water and the rays of light that make up the earth. Free from material consciousness, free from the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time, a master transfers his body of light with equal ease over the rays of light of earth, water, fire or air. Prolonged concentration on the liberating spiritual eye enables the yogi to destroy all illusions relating to matter and its gravitational weight; from that moment on he sees the universe essentially as an undifferentiated mass of light. — (Yogananda)
Born in Bogotá (1984), Javier Vanegas studied Fine Arts at the University of the Andes, and completed a Master's in Research in Art and Creation at the Complutense University of Madrid with a full scholarship awarded by the Carolina Foundation in 2017. In 2019 he began his doctoral thesis "Research on the digital image in the Kogui community of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta" PhD in Fine Arts UCM research line photography. He made his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá MAMBO, with his degree project "Postmodern Portrait", which obtained the recognition of a meritorious thesis. In 2014 he exhibited at MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome within the framework of the Italian Photography Festival with his work entitled AMPO and in 2016 he participated in the PhotoEspaña festival in the collective exhibition Fotografía Trasversal. Within the framework of the same festival in 2018 he made the solo exhibition Tempus Fugit, Madrid. His photography project titled EXTINTO was presented at the Galería El Museo in Bogotá 2019 and later participated in Fotográfica Bogotá 2019 with the Galería LA.
In 2017 he received the “Scholarship for Colombians in the process of artistic and cultural training abroad” from the Ministry of Culture. Among the recognitions that his artistic work has had, the following stand out: the Prize of the 6th Two-Dimensional Art Salon awarded by the Gilberto Álzate Avendaño Foundation, the Uniandinos Arts Award, IV version, and the honorable mention of the Fernando Botero Award. In 2017 he obtained the Red Galería Santa Fe Scholarship , continuous programming category, director of the Third University Photography Salon. He has participated in the publication of books such as Tarjeta De Memoria / Memory Card , essays on contemporary photography in Colombia. He also published in the books Los sueños de la Razón and Revela Colombia 2011 published by the Ministry of Culture.
He is currently a professor in the professional photography course offered by the Faculty of Arts at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University . He worked as a professor in the Department of Arts at the Universidad de los Andes where he taught the subjects of Experimental Photography and Basic Photography , and was also in charge of the Advanced Photography subject at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana . Since 2012 he is a member of the Si Nos Pagan Boys Collective, an independent self-management initiative. He is the Director and co-creator of the Salón Universitario de Fotografía, a platform for the dissemination and visualization of photographic proposals that arise in the field of higher education in Colombia.
Additionally, he has participated in the international biennials of Asunción Paraguay and Curitiba Brazil . He has exhibited his work at fairs in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, London, Miami, Lima, Caracas, Madrid, New York and Bogotá. In May 2021, he was invited by the Austrian embassy in Vienna to represent Colombia in the exhibition " New Ibero-American Photography" and the same year he was invited by the Israeli embassy in Telavid to represent Colombia at the Photo: Israel International Photography Festival with his VIP project.
In 2023, he received the National Photography Award granted by the Ministry of Culture for his career and dedication to photography. His visual work questions the paragon of the photographic device and questions the colonized gaze in today's performance society based on the understanding and recognition of the ancestral knowledge of indigenous peoples.
