Heidi Yssennagger was born in 1968 and lives in Kent, England, with her teenage daughter.
At the age of 16, she was hospitalised with Crohn's disease, and endured the first of many abdominal operations.
Despite prolonged periods of illness and immense pain, Heidi travelled exstensively throughout her twenties, taking on jobs as varied as magician's assistant, timeshare towt, singer in a piano bar, surf shorts designer/maker, cross atlantic sailing crew, film extra, Life Model and Nursery school teacher.
In Hong Kong, she married a Dutch writer. In 2002, after returning to the UK, and after the birth of their two children, and with worsening health, Heidi took the radical decision to have the remaining small section of her colon removed completely, in an attempt to stave off further disease and suffering. The operation, included the forming of an ileostomy. Unfortunately, this operation was not successful, and Heidi spent almost six months in hospital as a result, fighting for her life.
On finally winning the battle and coming home from hospital, Heidi decided to use her pain in her art, firstly as therapy and secondly as a medium with which to break away at the taboos that surround both the unhealthy and the post operative body, but also those that surround the subject of ileostomies and colostomies.
More recently, termination of the marriage; the pain of the loss of a new love, seizures and a freak cycling accident in which she broke her neck, fractured her spine and her left wrist kept her out of the studio. But life goes on...this pain and adversity too will be analysed in time...