Born in 1975 in Bogota where she lives and works, Leyla Cárdenas studied Fine Arts at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá and completed an MFA at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Her work has been shown in various public spaces such as the last Lyon Biennial-France and Cuenca Biennial-Peru, Museo del Barrio, New York, LACMA-Los Angeles, as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA delGetty and at Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH), OCMA Orange County Museum of Art as part of the California Pacific Triennale, Palais de Tokyo-Paris, Q21 Museums Quartier-Vienna, Museo de Arte de Zapopán- México, CAM-Raleigh, Institute of Contemporary Art-San Jose (SJICA), Museo de Arte Moderno-Medellín, Maison de l'Amérique Latine-Paris, Apexart-New York, Banco de la República Bogotá, among others.

Recent awards and commissions include: artist residency in Switzerland in 2022,in Georgia in 2020, recipient 2018 as a mid-career artist of the Grant and Commission program of the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation*, Premio Oma al Arte in 2016, artist in residency at Q21Museums Quartier Wien-Austria 2016, NEARCHArt

and Archeology “The Materiality of the Invisible” residency at the Jan Van Eyck Academie , Maastricht - NL 2015-2017.

Cárdenas work can be found in public and private collections in Colombia, South America, Europe and throughout the States.