Janice Maria Mancini Ys (JMMYS) creates visual work that reflects on identity, history, and everyday emotion. Her style blends traditional and digital techniques, often combining subtle symbolism with raw, honest expression. Each piece stands on its own, yet connects to a wider search for meaning.

2025:

BONING is a series of oil paintings and polychromos pencil works on kraft paper (50 x 70 cm). It is an abstract dissection of flesh, bone, and consciousness.
Fragmented yet suggestive, the series explores the transformation from identity to matter.
It marks a shift in JMMYS’s practice: from urban drawing and storytelling toward the abstract subconscious, in a process of decomposition and reformation.

BIRDEN is like BONING, it digs beneath the surface. Not just into structure or bones, but into the fog that hangs between thought and body.
The word Birden plays with layers: it sounds like “bird,” suggests “burden,” and in Turkish, birden means “suddenly.” These figures came that way; sudden and instinctive. Like a pattern I didn’t plan, but knew.

Each one feels like part simulation, part self-portrait. A visual loop, like a Droste image folding in on itself.

_{The painting Nickels & Riches explores how different family histories intertwine within Dutch history. It reflects on inherited wealth and the lack of freedom that once defined it.
Through symbols like a slave ship, heirlooms, coins, and the Financial Times, the work mirrors a shared past of privilege and loss.}

_{Spaceships and golden gates appear as portals gestures of hope, imagining a new day beyond what was once owned.}

SIM(P)

_{Love or anxiety.}

_{SIM-pathy reflects on how AI technology is beginning to shape our psyche. It captures the strange moment when you catch yourself saying “oh sorry, I meant…” to an online assistent and wonder what that means.}

_{A new kind of empathy is emerging: SIM-pathy.}

Portfolio 2024

Empty SHELL’s

A visual critique of greenwashing and corporate storytelling.
This illustrated poster exposes the hollow promises behind Shell’s environmental messaging, blending fairytale aesthetics with corporate symbols.

Gulden Middenweg

Gulden Middenweg
Official city illustration of Middelburg, 2023.
Inspired by a medieval city map from 1657 in which the fortress of Middelburg is still clearly visible. The composition highlights a spiral pattern; the Golden Ratio. A spiral pattern found throughout nature, from human DNA to the Milky Way, it’s subtly embedded in the city’s layout.

The title refers to the “Golden Mean,” a concept introduced by Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE), who praised a life of balance, away from extremes. This work weaves together visual harmony and the Droste effect in a layered reflection on Middelburg’s structure and history.

ETTY

ETTY HILLESUM

Official city illustration of Middelburg, 2023.
Iconography of Middelburg’s Most Beloved Citizen 
Born January 15, 1914 – Died November 30, 1943, Auschwitz.

Depicted at the historic City Hall of Middelburg, originally featuring the Dutch Queen Juliana and Queen Wilhelmina.

Exhibition at the DRVKKERY

YScream

Serie: POP

Older

DE SPOTPRENT group exhibition

SPOTPRENT (2019)
Exhibited at CBK Zeeland as part of the group show SPOTPRENT.
Three commissioned posters were created for pop venue De Spot in Middelburg.

The BOOB-CAP

MARIA group exhibition, The Hague

Maria (2016)
Exhibited in the group show MARIA at Onze Lieve Vrouw Onbevlekt Ontvangen, The Hague.
In this ink and pencil illustration, Maria Mancini Ys reimagines the Virgin Mary as a comic book heroine: Super Don Madonna.

Blending sacred iconography with pop culture. Rendered in a bold, illustrative style, the work plays with devotion, power, and feminine myth, echoing both DC Comics and centuries of religious representation.

Serie: BLOW

Serie: TEETHING

Teething (2015)
A quiet reflection on the in-between space of childhood and adolescence.
Domestic scenes shift between comfort and unease.

One work uses cut-outs; others remain more painterly, soft yet alert.
Together they suggest how early memories linger.

Serie: BLANC

BLANC (2017)
Citizens’ heights in nostalgic visions of 1970s Netherlands and Curaçao, seen through warped memories.
The scenes feel familiar: modest, classical, almost gentle.
But as familiarity deepens, something shifts.
As familiarity deepens, a creepiness emerges: caught glances, subtle distortions, and a sense that something is just not right.

Dear Mr. Present State at MUNICH

DEAR MR. PRESENT STATE
One stone laser-engraved with The 10 Demands. The other shaped in a prehistoric, fully manual process.
Presented at the Moving Urban Cultures Festival, Munich (DE), June 11–20, 2015.
Part of the WTD.eu & Coolpolitics Sustainability Program.
– With support from FabLab Middelburg (NL)
– Stones donated by the City of Vlissingen (NL)
– Eco-kindness included

Serie: Goh