Yadira Capaz is a research-based artist deeply committed to manifesting the prayers of our ancestors and healing the future. She was born in Havana, Cuba and is based out of Miami, Florida, United States. Yadira is building a body of work focused on environmental art and social practice to catalyze the power of community activism. Her strong roots in African and Indigenous wisdom ground her methodology in a decolonial and ecofeminist framework. Climate resilience is at the forefront of her mind, and she is weaving together her background in urban planning, anthropology, creative technology, and community building through many projects and collaborations. She is currently focused on developing her wilderness education project Swamp Therapy to encourage diverse people across Miami to heal their relationship with the land by connecting to the Everglades ecosystem in meaningful ways.

Maintaining a strong intellectual life is a key part of who she is. In 2017, Yadira Capaz received a B.A. in Urban Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University where her research focused on the role of the arts in cities and led her to draft policy solutions to address the inequalities that emerge in the process of gentrification. Her thesis project focused on grassroots urban planning through the framework of the ‘Right to the City’ and modeled creating ‘Just Cities’ through artist-led urban interventions. After a year interning at the New Museum’s NEW INC incubator for people working at the intersection of art, technology and design, Yadira developed a dance project exploring the poetics of invisibility and surveillance as a creative technologist at ITP Camp at NYU. After graduation she returned home to Miami to pursue post-grad studies in Contemporary Art at ICA Miami through a combination of the cutting-edge Art + Research Center programming and her initiative to create the Ask Me Tour Program. Eventually she developed an identity in the Miami arts ecosystem as The Priestess of Art reviewing exhibitions, digging through archives, and writing artist profiles to make use of the research and storytelling skills she developed. She hosts an eclectic research podcast called The African Nomad’s Digital Library as a way to stay in dialogue with the curious minds around her.