Trained in architecture, Yamandú Canosa has lived and worked in Barcelona since the mid-1970s, with stays in Europe, the USA, Brazil and Argentina. He began his artistic practice through drawing, but soon turned to photography, collage and painting. Plural and heterogeneous, his researches focus on the limits of language and memory, cultural identities and migrant processes, the fragility of affection and the construction of experience. Sign, metaphor and metalanguage are common tools in his drawings and paintings.

He began to exhibit from the mid-1990s, including exhibitions at the Museu de l’Empordà, Figueres (2002), Centro de Arte, Salamanca (2003), Santa Mònica, Barcelona (2004), Centro Cultural de España, Montevideo (2005) and a retrospective at the Fundació Suñol, Barcelona (2011). He represented Uruguay at the Venice Biennale in 2019. His work is included in the collections of the Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona; Domus Artium, Salamanca; Fundació Suñol, Barcelona; and MACBA, Barcelona.