Professional Portfolio
Professional Biography
Yoan Alba (Cuba, 1989) is an artist who approached painting the way one approaches fire: instinctively, without permission, driven by an urgency that could not wait. His work arises from an inner necessity rather than formal schooling—a creative impulse that transforms mistakes into journeys and the unknown into visual language.
He lives and works in Miami, where he develops a painting style that neither imitates nor decorates, but rather breathes and questions. His approach, known as Arte Mutante, blends loose, expressive strokes with human figures full of emotion, surrounded by strange beings born from dreams, forgotten mythologies, or childhood memories. No background remains safe from transformation.
Alba’s lines do not seek to control the image, but to free whatever is trapped behind it. Each piece is a crack into what lies beyond, where the absurd, the symbolic, and the profoundly human intersect.
His work has been described as a fusion of gesture, wound, and play—but above all, as an insistence: to make visible that which has no name, only presence.
Mutante Manifest
My work is born from emotional chaos, from the deepest corners of the subconscious where tenderness, violence, play, memory, and the sacred coexist. I paint human figures that are never alone: they are surrounded by impossible beings, creatures that replace objects, and emotions that take form. They are part of the environment, of the soul, of memory—or of a dimension that cannot be seen but can be felt.
I work with loose lines, as if drawing with my eyes closed. What matters to me is the gesture, not perfection; the message, not the technique. Sometimes a figure falls apart, a child takes flight, a mother embraces as the world dissolves into colors. There are no rules. Only urgency.
My paintings are scenes that could be dreams, myths, social critiques, or prayers. Sometimes they are painful, sometimes absurd, always raw. They are born from a place where the viewer does not know whether to laugh, cry, or remember something long forgotten.
I paint from the edge of the abyss, but also from play. From contradiction. From the human.
Primordial Interface
2025
Óil in Canvas
48 x 60 inc - 122 x 152 cm
A ritual scene unfolds beneath the surface, where figures do not speak: they channel. Surrounded by shapes resembling electric roots, they merge into a silent ceremony. This work is flesh, is body, a primal energy tied to connection before the idea of connection even existed. Everything vibrates from an ancestral pulse that cannot be seen but is felt.
Assembly of Being
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A suspended entity in the air is assembled by other shapes that barely seem human. There is no creation here, only preparation. What emerges is not machinery, but a breath, a role greater than good or evil. A force silently armed beneath the universe’s logic, which we have yet to understand.
The Weaver
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A solitary figure carries centuries of symbols. She does not remain still: she weaves generations together across history, ritual, and memory. What bursts from her body is neither adornment nor ornament. This work is a living thread weaving cultures, ancient fears, and humanity’s need to make mystery tangible.
Symphony of Tradition
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
Two bodies embrace with a tenderness outside of time, while around them float beings that replace objects, words, fruits, and roots. This couple is not about love or ancestry alone: it is about a tradition that refuses to be preserved—it reinvents. Each figure decorates the landscape not to fill it, but to deny a lifeless world without soul.
Woven Into the Material
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A figure holds a heart made of souls, with eyes closed, like someone entering a patio. The background is not landscape, it is an internal choreography—a living body where symbols become flesh. Here, a ritual for life, blood, and deep memory is staged within the body itself.
We Are the People
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A powerful figure stands tall, pregnant and armed, like a totem of liberty. Around her, distorted beings swirl, creatures of contradiction: protection, rebellion, conflict. Freedom here is not a concept—it is a body that shields with what it has.
Refuge of Tenderness
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A figure embraces another with a surrender that needs no words. The background is not scenery—it is a bond. Strange beings appear like toys, friends, presences inhabiting this intimate shelter. This work is not about representing a scene, but about transforming an emotion into a space.
Childhood Dreams
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A figure on a swing inhabits a park that is not a park: it is a vision. Around it float presences that could be other children, games, or scattered thoughts. This work is not an attempt to paint innocence—it dreams of that magical leap into madness. It does not represent childhood: it reinvents it from the excess of imagination.
The Cross and the Being of Light
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A stretched figure over a red cross vibrates against a dark background, surrounded by creatures that do not judge—they observe. Some appear innocent, others are disturbed by what happens. This crucifixion is not religious; it is symbolic. An inexplicable scene where human frailty becomes compassion.
Master's Heartbeat
2024
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A figure connects to the earth through a green dress, crowned by roots and surrounded by bones, animals, and hidden presences. She is not a saint; she is an incarnation of deep ritual, a spirituality older than churches. The roots are not decorations; they are forces dancing inside her. Light and shadow move together with her.
Touch of Eternity
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A figure rises toward a sky that isn’t fully a sky. The orange background darkens as if the atmosphere were giving way, as if the ascent broke through the threshold of desire and gravity. This body is not abducted by external forces: it responds to an internal, vertical, untamable impulse. Abduction here is not extraterrestrial; it’s sexual, emotional, poetic. What elevates it is not the sky, but what is left behind. A scene suspended between ecstasy and loss.
Abduction
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A large figure watches in silence as two presences beside it manipulate it with subtle gestures. It’s not about power, but perception. What seems like a leader is merely a body held by other wills. The chromatic duality of its face—red roots, blue actions—suggests a soul divided between tradition and betrayal. This ancient puppet floats above a collapsing city, while its purple hair carries the weight of centuries. It does not command. It lets itself be used.
The Puppt of the Wind
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A large figure watches in silence as two presences beside it manipulate it with subtle gestures. It’s not about power, but perception. What seems like a leader is merely a body held by other wills. The chromatic duality of its face—red roots, blue actions—suggests a soul divided between tradition and betrayal. This ancient puppet floats above a collapsing city, while its purple hair carries the weight of centuries. It does not command. It lets itself be used.
Four Windows One Being
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A face fragments into four visions, each anchored in a different dimension. This figure does not suffer from its division: it inhabits it. Among galaxies, worlds, and strange presences, it remains intact, expanded. Its long neck connects times and planes, while creatures float around it like inhabitants of a parallel cosmogony. This piece doesn’t represent a fractured being; it represents one that can’t fit into a single form.
Intimate Architecture
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
Two buildings gaze at each other with longing. They are not structures; they are bodies sustaining themselves, inhabited by neighbors who are part of their very walls. In their windows, naked beings appear—not for provocation, but for belonging. Everything merges: flesh, concrete, gaze, erection, observation. This scene poses an unresolved question: do we live within what we desire, or do we desire it because it shelters us?
What are You Looking At
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A larger figure stares back at the viewer from a space that is neither landscape nor body: it is perception. It’s trapped in an environment made of curtains, trees that aren’t trees, creatures that seem like pupils. Its voice resonates with a color the human eye can barely recognize, as if the scene itself hypnotized you to enter—and remain. It’s not the figure that watches; it’s the artwork that stares through her. And the question bounces back at the viewer like an unsettling echo.
Paisaje Temporal
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A traveler crosses an invisible threshold between worlds, dragging fragments, creatures, and memories behind. The body disintegrates, the feet dissolve into the atmosphere, as if spiritual transit included everything: what is seen and what is heavy. He carries a hat but no shirt; a suitcase but no destination. He travels not by place, but by the remnants of what might never have existed.
Feathers of Silence
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A translucent figure merges with a sky we do not recognize. Its fingers and lips float like the remains of a goddess who refuses to be revealed. Feathers, eggs, and impossible birds burst from its head, a language of the unsaid. It does not camouflage to hide; it camouflages because it belongs to silence. The sacred, the original, sometimes only hints at itself.
The Man of the Cosmos
2025
Óil in Canvas
24 x 36 inc - 61 x 92 cm
A two-faced god—one blue, one golden—watches from his cosmic curvature. At his feet, creatures who adore, follow, and mimic him. Some hail from childhood memories. Others resemble insects, offspring, or lost assistants. His head burns like a sun, but his body bears a shroud. Is it veneration or confusion? Parenthood or power? He stares, and one of his beings clutches his own head. No one has all the answers.
Ancestral Fusion
2025
Óil in Canvas
48 x 60 inc - 122 x 152 cm
A blue figure waits, seated on a throne made of trunk or silence. Around it, footless bodies dance a ceremony that melts away. Fingers dissolve. Flesh turns to mud. Ancient ritual or modern fiction? No one knows, but all orbit it. Is it hunting, ceremony, or both? The ground is water, but flows. And power does not impose: it is invoked.
(Incluye Biografía Profesional y Declaración Artística)
It wasn’t a gallery, a prestigious art school, or some grand epiphany.
It was my wife who said, “Do it.”
And with that simple word, she pushed me to begin.
I knew nothing.
Not about canvases, pigments, or technique.
I only knew that what I saw hanging in stores had no soul.
So I painted.
First on cheap surfaces, then on real canvases.
And without meaning to, something inside me opened.
Since then, every time I sit in front of a canvas,
I have no idea what will happen.
There are days of silence, and days of storms.
Some paintings feel like screams; others are barely whispers.
Some are meant to stay; others are meant only for me to understand.
And many… not even I fully understand.
Painting is not an activity.
It’s a state of being.
Sometimes I lose myself so completely in that space,
that when I emerge, I barely know what I created—
but I know it was honest.
I have painted with fury, with tenderness, with fear, with faith.
I have painted for the world, and I have painted only for myself.
And there are works I have kept hidden,
because they are still too raw,
too true.
Out of all that—
out of that real need,
out of that urgency to speak without a filter—
Arte Mutante was born.
A way of painting without obedience.
Without seeking approval.
Without calculation.
A free voice.
A language that doesn’t try to please.
Only to exist, fiercely.