PIPE YANGUAS SEES THE WORLD THROUGH DOTS AND LINES. HIS WORK REVEALS HOW BEAUTY EMERGES WHEN PEOPLE, PLACES, AND STORIES INTERSECT.
BY ERIN MICHELLE NEWBERG
There is a particular kind of enthusiasm that still survives in Miami. You see it in artists who believe beauty can do more than decorate a place. Pipe Yanguas belongs firmly to that camp.
Spend an afternoon with him, and it quickly becomes apparent that he isn’t especially interested in talking about himself. He’d rather discuss the markings on a Colombian beetle, the geometry of tree canopies, or the elderly couple who still hold hands after seventy years of marriage. Somewhere between those seemingly unrelated subjects lies the philosophy that has quietly shaped his work.
Born in Cali, Colombia, Yanguas discovered drawing as a child. “When I was 8, I started drawing,” he recalls. “As I entered my teens, I started photographing everything around me.” Photography eventually led him to Italy, where he studied the medium before embarking on a career documenting families across South Florida.
“Every year or two, I get a call to keep documenting them,” he says. “I get to watch their evolution.”
Those photographs became visual biographies, capturing not milestones but the quiet accumulation of life itself.
An unexpected encounter in Colombia would alter the course of his career. After photographing a coreid bug nymph, Yanguas became captivated by the intricate network of dots and lines covering its shell.
“Once I photographed this gorgeous bug and drew it,” he says. “I understood that her markings carried a message of connection.”
That discovery evolved into the visual language that now defines his paintings and monumental murals, which have transformed walls in Miami’s Design District, Manhattan, and beyond.
“I think everything is connected,” he says simply. His murals have become gathering places as much as public artworks.
“My works transform blank walls into places where people gather,” he explains. “When strangers stop, take photographs together, or start conversations, that’s when the mural is complete.”
That same belief in connection inspired Wisdom of the Century, a 2024 coffee-table book created alongside a psychologist, writer, and graphic designer, documenting the lives of ninety South Floridians over the age of ninety.
“It was an instant yes for me,” he says. “I’ve always photographed people’s lives. This time I entered their homes to listen.”
The conversations ranged from Holocaust survivors to lifelong couples, but one encounter lingered. Artist Kenneth Treister, then ninety-four, welcomed Yanguas into his studio, where fresh canvases still leaned against the walls.
“He was still painting,” Yanguas recalls. “That’s how I envision myself.”
The experience affirmed something he has come to believe through both photography and painting.
“Every day I love to learn,” he says. “People dream of retirement. I keep thinking I’ll be working until the end of time.”
In a city often drawn to spectacle, Pipe Yanguas has quietly built a career around something more enduring. His murals may stop people in their tracks, but it is the humanity behind them that keeps them looking.
