Myra Barraza lives and paints in London. For over 30 years she has developed her arts practice after initial studies at The Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. in 1990.

Winner of the Drawing Award from the Museum of Latin American Art of Long Beach, California (2008); the First Prize at the Santo Domingo Drawing Salon in Dominican Republic (2007); and the 2009 Accesit Prize at the Ibero-American Print Biennial of Cáceres, Spain, among other recognitions; Barraza has made important contributions to the regional artistic discourse and is one of the leading artists in El Salvador. In 2016 she was Guest Visitor to Berlin Art Week by the Federal Republic of Germany and, the previous year, Travel Grantee by the Patricia Phelps Cisneros Foundation to the CIMAM Forum in Tokyo. 

Myra Barraza has deep hispanic roots and has travelled internationally living in Asia, Central America, USA and Europe during different periods in her life. She was born in El Salvador and is a Spanish national on her mother's side. 

In Spain, she was selected for the XXXI Pontevedra Biennial: “Utropicos” curated by Santiago Olmo in 2010, and for “Meso-America: Oscillations and Artifices” at the Atlantic Center for Modern Art in Las Palmas Gran Canarias in 2002, as well as awarded an Artists Residence at the Fundación Valparaíso in Almería. 

In El Salvador, between 2006 and 2010 she developed a body of work under the title “Republic of Death'' based on a blog recounting the local daily murder rate and reflecting on the role of artists in society. The mixed media series went on an itinerant exhibition throughout the Spanish Cultural Centres of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. 

Barraza has actively created and engaged with community projects such as the art and literature E-Magazine El Ojo de Adrián of which she was Founding Member and Editor between 2009 and 2012; and Y.ES Contemporary Art for El Salvador, of which she was Council Member between 2015 and 2018. 

The Museo del Barrio in New York, the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in Puerto Rico, the Museum of Modern Art in Guatemala and the II Biennial of Lima, Peru, have all exhibited Barraza's work. In 2019 her work was shown as part of ”Black Mirror”, curated by Claire Breukel at Florida Atlantic University in Miami, and of “Nine Women in the Arts” at the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center in South Korea. Since 2013, she is part of the Dallas-based Liliana Bloch Gallery's roster of artists.

Barraza arrived in London in 2018 appointed as Cultural Attache, later Consul General, at the El Salvador Embassy. Since October 2023 she is artist in residence at the Bow Arts Live&Work scheme in South East London. In the UK her work has been shown at Wells Art Contemporary, Wales’ Festival El Sueño Existe and at the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Exhibition.