We were lucky to catch up with Yani recently and have shared our conversation below.

Yani, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I grew up poor. When I was four, my father went to prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and my mother worked nights as a cocktail waitress, among other things. I saw her maybe an hour a day, except on Sundays. On Sundays we went to church. Looking back, it was probably for the free food. Still, those were the best days. That’s where I started to recognize something in myself that felt otherworldly.
After church, my mother would drive us through the wealthier neighborhoods and we’d dig through the trash for whatever people had thrown away. We found one armed Ninja Turtles, old lamps, chairs, hell its how we got our TV. Once, we even found an easel and a set of paints. That easel changed something for me. It gave me a way to disappear without leaving, to build a private world inside myself.
I’ve never believed in staying loyal to one medium. Painting led to gluing broken toys into strange new creatures, collaging outdated magazines, and when I ran out of paint smearing rotten food onto pieces of cardboard and leaving them outside our apartment to bake in the sun. It was messy, temporary, and alive.
It also taught me an early lesson, you can’t be precious about your work. When I finished something and felt satisfied, my mother would make me throw it away. The art existed fully, briefly, and then it was gone.
Looking back, that cycle feels foundational. Making, releasing, moving on. Nothing was permanent but the act of creating always was.

Yani, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I make my art for people who feel like they were built out of leftovers, broken toys and a childhood dream to be different. I make my art unstable, I create things that hold tension. Poverty and imagination, decay and beauty, humor and the threat of violence. If you’re looking for something that feels like it survived by staring at a public access show on a broken TV as a child, alone in the night, as sirens blare and mentally unstable drug addicts scream nonsense into the void right outside your window while the sun starts to rise, that’s where we align.

The “problem” I solve? I challenge the idea that value comes from polish. I question permanence. I reject preciousness. What sets me apart isn’t technique. There are a million better technicians. It’s perspective. I don’t romanticize struggle, but I also don’t pour bleach over it.

What am I most proud of? That I never waited for permission. Nobody discovered me. No institution validated me first. No Juliard acclaim, no hack fraud art school degree. I made work because not making it felt worse. I would die if i couldnt do it. I’m trash and I LOVE trash. What I want people to gain from my free online spiritual lessons is this, we as a people arent aspirational, were honest, were flawed, we’re ugly and beauty is a sin.
My work is alive. Its bloody, its dying and its pure. It might unsettle you. It might make you laugh at something you thought was tragic. That tension is the point.
I don’t create to be admired.
I create because something has to be destroyed, and that something is our deep rooted desire to be pretty little boys and girls.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

If youre thinking about buying NFTs you need to drain every last penny in your bank account on them immediately. NFTs are the future of art and if you miss out now, you’ll regret it every waking moment of your life and will end up staring into your children and grandchildrens eyes through tears knowing you couldve provided them a better life.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Unlearning is the key to life itself. Unlearn everything everyday. Unlearn things you unlearned yesterday. Its all garbage. “Learning” is a lie. Theres no reason for it except survival, and survival isnt worth anything in the end anyway. Unlearn unlearning, unlearn who you are, unlearn what what love, unlearn what you hate, unlearn what it means to be alive.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @yamaygo
• Youtube: @yamaygo

Image Credits

Heman Chavez