DIGITAL SHOWING Janice Maria Mancini Ys (J.M.M.Ys), The Netherlands.​

I use my work to give the subconscious a stage. I am drawn to what stays unspoken, the urge to dissolve secrets and dissect enlightened bliss.

Recognizing patterns and playing with them through my resurfacing subjects: distorted faces – birds – classical masters – sea – sky – blue and pink. Together, these different facets and connections form a world of their own.

MEDIUMS: I combine analog mediums like oil, acrylic, ink, and Polychromos pencils with mixed media, photography, digital painting, and subtle 3D elements.

2026:

Mouth Fishing (2026) is a blacklight self-portrait at the Keith Haring exhibition in Munich (2015), digitally reshaped into a figurine.

Serie INNING: BUTTON, 100×100 cm, oil paint on canvas, 2026.

Sketches BUTTON:

Serie INNING: BELLIES, 100×100 cm, oil paint on canvas, 2026.

Sketches BELLIES:

Acrylics on offset print carton: KLIMBLOEM (62×162 cm), 2026:

Inspired by Monet’s 1916 Waterlillies.

Klimbloem (Climbflower) emerged organically when a Monet art contest coincided with a video of a friend’s first bouldering experience. Seeing Monet’s iconic water lilies transformed into vertical climbing holds, the work serves as a metaphor for the support and hold we offer each other.

​Inspired by the color palette of Monet’s Nymphéas (c. 1916) and his panoramic format, it is painted in acrylics on 30+ year old offset printing carton (62×162 cm) featuring a gray coating.

POSTER DESIGNS 2026:

Painting:

Serie INNING: PIPE, 100×100 cm, oil paint on canvas, 2026.

2025:

Serie: BONING

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: BIRDEN 2025

Serie BIRDEN: INSERT (81×42 cm) oil on panel 2025

Work in progress and close-up

The serieBIRDEN 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.

Flesh and Flora (42×81 cm) oil on panel, 2025

Work in progress:

MIND (60×60 cm), LOOSE (50×70 cm), BIRDEN (60×60 cm)

MY BIRDEN (50×70 cm), oil on kraftpaper, 2025

MILL (50×40 cm), oil on canvas, wooden frame, 2025

_{The painting Nickels & Riches (40×120 cm) 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.}

_{Materials: Oilpant, 5 eurocent, epoxy on a linnen canvas.}

SIM-pathy

_{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.}

_{Love or anxiety}(50×70 cm)

2024:

In 2023–2024, I experimented with digital artwork alongside traditional media. I did not use AI to create my work, but the rise of AI-generated imagery made me more aware of how much I value a sense of craft, imperfection, and human touch. At the same time, I noticed myself gradually moving away from the increasingly polished, sweet, and overly aestheticized look that was becoming so prevalent online. It started to feel like a little too much sugar for me, too slick, too perfect, too much.

I still find myself drawn to that aesthetic at times, but more and more, I feel the need to push against it, or deliberately overdo it until the sweetness becomes almost uncomfortable.

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

Pencil & digital art: YScream

A reinterpretation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, capturing the weight of catatonic despair. The central structure acts as a wormhole. A looping force that pulls and vacuums into an endless cycle.

Selected for the top 25 of the AVROTROS Edvard Munch art competition 2023.

Pencil & digital art: Sit and Tired of it

Looking at the world through the lens of art inspires me directly. Masters like Munch, Monet, Van Gogh, Magritte, and Matisse etc. spark the associations I make in daily life. It’s like unravelling something.

Serie: POP

This is not a Bad Doll.

Combining René Magritte’s critique of representation with the historic Clark Doll Test, which revealed how systemic bias leads children to associate white dolls with positive traits and black dolls with negative ones, this piece challenges internalized racial prejudice.

Just as Magritte’s pipe shows that an image is not reality, the doll exposes how powerful visual narratives shape our perception.

Older

Older/archive

Serie: Washed-up 2018-2020

Much like natural phenomena, it is hard to put into words why nature touches us so deeply, it simply does. For me, the sea and the sky is a recurring thread running through my life and family roots. And the color blue has became my escapism. It carries an intrinsic pull that reaches me wherever I currently live in Zeeland-The Netherlands, as the daughter of an immigrant from the island of Curaçao, across the ocean. From coast to coast.

​In the painting (above) Washed-up, you can see my father during his years living in Curaçao.

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.

POSTERS 2019:

The BOOB-CAP (2018)

Serie: CC (Chickens & Chemicals) 2019

The meaning of CC (Chickens & Chemicals) 2019 has evolved over time. At the moment of creation, I didn’t realize I was painting pre-birth family secrets. Now, with the truths that surfaced in 2026, it is clear that my subconscious already knew everything and translated it onto the canvas.

​Seeing how closely my earlier work predicted reality has deepened my connection to the creative process. This space serves as my unedited, open record.

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, J.M.M. Ys reimagines the Virgin Mary as a comic book heroine: Super Don Madonna.

Serie: BLOW (2017)

Serie: BLANC

BLANC (2017) A Generational Whodunnit.
Citizens’ heights in nostalgic visions of 1970s Netherlands and Curaçao, seen through warped memories.The scenes feel familiar, modest and almost gentle.
As familiarity deepens, a creepiness emerges, caught glances, subtle distortions, and a sense that some things are just not right.

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.

In these works, I explore the unwritten rules and underlying dynamics of human connection and visual language. I am drawn to those rare, fleeting moments when a mask slips, a subtle shift often revealed in a small, quiet gesture, like the light raise of an eyebrow or joyous crow’s feet around the eyes. Because these moments pass so quickly in real time, I use the creation process to slow them down, dissect them, and fully immerse myself in their nuance.

Dear Mr. Present State at MUNICH (2015)

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

Evolution of Mata Hari

Serie: Goghel (2015)

Van Gogh meets modern-day anxiety: technology, isolation, red-pill culture, overconsumption and the overwhelming noise of the digital age.