Talya Whyte (yaya) (b. 1999) is an Alabama-born, Brooklyn-based artist and lawyer with Jamaican and Guyanese heritage.

The heart of yaya’s work lies in the integration of her research interests in ecology, human and animal intelligence, emergent phenomena, metaphysics, and futurism through her painting practice. She draws inspiration from her extensive photo and journal archives, which catalogue her family’s diasporic experiences immigrating to the United States from the Caribbean and her own upbringing between Alabama and West Virginia. Her work charts the fractured experience of being nomadic, being spread across places.

yaya intentionally engages her subconscious using various embodiment practices, drawing inspiration from the surrealist movement and related psychoanalytic thought. Her work is driven by an insatiable curiosity about the complex intelligence of the natural world. She works primarily in oil paint, acrylic paint, and charcoal.

Whyte completed a BS in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Alabama (2021) and a JD at New York University School of Law (2024).

For inquiries, please email talyawhyte@gmail.com