The Colombian multimedia artist Sandra Llano-Mejía was born in Cali in 1951. She studied art at the Instituto de Bellas Artes de Cali in 1968 before moving in 1972 to Mexico City, where she continued her education at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas, Colegio de Artes Visuales, in 1976; the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she studied with the Argentine thinker Néstor García Canclini; and at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Xochimilco in 1978. She lived and worked in Mexico for more than twenty years before moving to New York, where she continues to reside.

The work of Llano-Mejía stands out for her innovative use of technology, including computers and medical equipment. For instance, her In pulso (In pulse, 1978) was the first video installation in Colombia, presented at the 4th Salón Atenas in Bogotá, curated by Eduardo Serrano. For this work Llano- Mejía went to the physics department of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and had medical sensors attached to her body, which sent signals to a machine that recorded her heartbeat. In essence this was a self-portrait of the artist made by employing equipment that was atypical in the realm of art. This work solidly put Llano-Mejía at the forefront of conceptual, video, and performance art in Colombia.