Javier Vanegas studied Fine Arts at the Universidad de los Andes, and completed the Master of Research Art and Creation at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with a full scholarship awarded by the Carolina Foundation in 2017. In 2019, he started his Ph.D. thesis "KOGUI 2.0 Expanded Image in the Performance Society". Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid, with photography as his research area.

In 2023 he received the National Photography Award granted by the Ministry of Culture for his career and dedication to photography.  His visual work questions the parergon of the photographic device and questions the colonized gaze in today's society of performance from the understanding and recognition of the ancestral knowledge of indigenous peoples.