Manuela Illera

Manuela Illera is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist based in Munich, working at the intersection of sound, performance, and moving image. Rooted in a feminist, decolonial perspective, her practice explores sound as a ritualistic force—a tool to disrupt and awaken spaces, bodies, and collective memory.

Through her solo project Manuela La Jaguara, she navigates ambient drones, Latin American folk, and noise. As co-founder of Cosmica Bandida, she blends cumbia, sci-fi disco, and experimental rhythms into high-energy, trance-inducing performances. She is also the co-director of the decolonial music festival La Retornona in Bogotá and host of the feminist podcast Extravagant Mortals.Her work, spanning music, film, and collaborative projects, seeks to dismantle the expectations imposed by whiteness, capitalism, and patriarchal conformity in culture. She holds a Diploma in Time-Based Media from the ADBK Munich and is the video producer at Haus der Kunst.