ARTIST IDENTITYJanice Maria Mancini Ys (born 1987, The Netherlands) is a contemporary visual artist and painter working across painting, drawing, photography and digital media.
Growing up with a visually impaired father who immigrated from Curaçao, Ys often helped him navigate his surroundings by describing what she saw. Looking closely at people, bodies, colour and details became part of her way of seeing. As well as making connections between things and creating a certain atmosphere.
Alongside her art practice, Ys worked in healthcare and disability care, and develops and leads workshops for a contemporary art institution. Working with children and people who communicate in different ways, combined with these educational and creative practices, has deeply strengthened her interest in non-verbal forms of expression.
Since 2019, her work has gradually shifted from more direct storytelling towards a more intuitive and open-ended way of making. Earlier experience in drawing, illustration and commissioned work remains visible in her practice, but her paintings increasingly develop through the process itself rather than from a fixed image or narrative.
Serie: INNING 2026
Serie INNING: BUTTON, 100×100 cm, oil paint on canvas2026.
BUTTON belongs to the INNING series, alongside works like BELLIES. The series originates from a simple physical fact: we are made of the exact same matter and frequencies as the cosmos itself. We operate on those same vibrations; our guts register it.
Within our inner realm,our inning, lies an instinctual, non-verbal resonance. This isn’t a romanticized or comfortable wisdom. It encompasses everything we carry collectively: deep-seated instincts, stored knowledge, and just as strongly, our shared, collective anxiety.
BUTTON captures that tension between cosmic origin and the raw, unpolished reality of human experience.
Sketches 2026 BUTTON:
This was a mistake piece from 2022:
This was made during a stage in my life when I just couldn’t get my mojo back, though I desperately tried. I bought these expensive canvases as a stimulus; I knew what I wanted to say, but it just wouldn’t come together.
Turned into BUTTON (2026).
I never showed this work because, at the time, I hated it. It felt like a painful mistake. Yet this piece (which I have now transformed) has become a personal symbol of growth and change.
Back then, I was trying to visualize life as an absorbing loop: a vortex pulling you inward while constantly repeating its cycles. In this foundational layer, several elements came together: the swirling energy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the cosmic frequencies and order of Tesla, the natural geometry of the Golden Ratio, and the apple tree in blossom representing creation, beginnings, and endings.
What once felt like a failure turned out to be a necessary grounding layer. Now, in 2026, after years of processing and getting back on my feet, I have drastically transformed this piece into BUTTON.
ARTIST STATEMENT/THE STORY
I am interested in the moment when a familiar image starts to become something else.
I work across painting, drawing, photography and digital media, using oil, acrylic, ink and Polychromos pencils alongside digital painting and 3D elements. I move between these mediums because the image itself tells me what it needs.
I often begin with something recognizable: a face, a body, a bird, a landscape, a fragment from art history. While working, I distort, cut apart and recombine these forms until their original identity starts to slip. A body can become meat, a bird can become a self-portrait, and an image can turn into something I did not intend to make.
This way of working comes from a fascination with the space between the conscious and the subconscious, the things we carry, but don’t always have words for. Recurring elements in my work include distorted faces, birds, sea and sky, and shifts between pink and blue. In series such as INNING (2026), currently in development, BONING (2025) and BIRDEN (2025), I explore these forms more intuitively, allowing the image to develop through the act of making rather than starting with a fixed answer.
For me, the interesting part is what happens when an image stops behaving the way I expect it to.
For a broader view of my practice and its development over the past decade, explore the archive athttp://www.jmmys.art
Serie INNING: BELLIES, 100×100 cm, oil paint on canvas2026.
Sketches BELLIES:
BELLIES is part of INNING, an introspection into universal, almost cosmic laws. Circular, yet somehow off. A bird-like shape, gut feelings and something felt deep in the bones. Yin and yang, but also yin and yin, yang and yang.
Serie: BONING2025
BONING(50×70 cm kraft papers) is a 7 part-series of oil paintings and polychromos pencils. It is literally breaking down the flesh while metaphorically growing a backbone. Fragmented and suggestive, welcome to the meat parlor.
It marks a shift in my practice, from urban drawing and storytelling toward the abstract subconscious, in a process of decomposition and reformation.
Serie: BIRDEN2025
Serie BIRDEN: INSERT (81×42 cm) Oil and acrylics on panel 2025.
Work in progress and close-up.
The serie 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”.
These figures came sudden and instinctive. Like a pattern I didn’t plan, but knew. As an unaware burden on your shoulders that your brain has trained you to ignore, (sometimes) reinforced by societal conditioning so you wouldn’t notice it. For example, the endless chase for (material) things.
Serie BIRDEN: Flesh and Flora (42×81 cm) Oil and acrylics on panel 2025.
Work in progress.
Serie BIRDEN: MIND (60×60 cm) – LOOSE (50×70 cm) – BIRDEN (60×60 cm) 2025.
Serie BIRDEN: MY BIRDEN (50×70 cm) Oil on kraftpaper 2025.
For a broader view of my practice and its development over the past decade, explore the archive athttp://www.jmmys.art
