Manuela Reyes
Born in 1982, Bogotá, Colombia
Lives and works in Washington, DC.
BIOGRAPHY
Manuela Reyes is a Colombian visual artist and curator, born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her creative sensibility was shaped from childhood by a family where art, photography, and Eastern practices were part of everyday life.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and went on to exhibit her work — paintings, photography, and installation — in shows across Colombia, including the Museo Bolivariano de Arte Contemporáneo, Botanical Garden of Bogotá and Rojo Galería.
From early in her practice, Manuela was drawn to installation art and the power of creating experiences that could be lived as much as observed. This exploration naturally led her to expand her creative practice into curating. She earned a Master’s degree in Curatorial Practice from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, then went on to work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) before joining the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she has spent over a decade working as a curator of contemporary art exhibitions and developing cultural projects across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States.
Her trajectory as an artist and curator was recognized in the United States with an O-1 visa for individuals of extraordinary ability in 2017, followed by the approval of her EB-1A extraordinary ability US Permanent Residence in 2026.
Today, Manuela has returned to her studio practice, bringing more than a decade of curatorial experience and an expanded understanding of how art can inhabit space and shape experience into her work—an evolution of a creative journey that has always moved between making and curating.