Jalyana Cuevas

Artist Statement

I am a Puerto Rican visual artist based in New Haven, Connecticut. I primarily work with digital drawing and photography. Through my art I enjoy telling stories that carry complex emotions that aren’t often easily understood. My aim is to make groups, cultures, religions, and others react in different ways. I really enjoy producing work that touches people while making them think.

Through my photographs I have been focusing on connecting different mediums and seeing how they correlate with one another. I love seeing the different ways people express themselves with art whether it’s by making music, acting, drawing, sculpting, or dancing, which my photography shows and follows. For the past four years attending my arts high school, I have been surrounded by the arts and have seen how frequently having art in one’s life can change people for the better, enable growth, and create a passage to find who you truly are. As an artist that mainly focuses on drawing, my photography has helped me better understand why people might choose their preferred art and how it affects them.

I use my iPhone camera through my entire process of creating photos. When I approach taking a photo, I carefully place my subject and focus on my lighting and perspective. Once I have my photo, I begin to edit it depending on the message I might be trying to convey. I find myself often dramatizing my saturation and lighting to make things pop.

— Jalyana Cuevas, Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School ’26

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