Daily Inspiration: Meet Yashi Davalos

Today we’d like to introduce you to Yashi Davalos

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m the daughter of a Afro Puerto Rican woman was formerly the director of a community center when I was a child. My father is from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He was incarcerated and deported when I was very young. I grew up in North Atlanta, Fulton County proper where I went to North Springs Charter High School via the arts magnet program. There I primarily studied music, and had secondary focuses in Theater and Writing. I went to the oldest public HBCU in Georgia, Savannah State University where I studied Vocal Performance.

My mother never pressured me like most immigrant parents to get into medicine or engineering. She always told me I could do anything in America, and I might as well do something I love. She did let me know though that I’d have to hustle to make it work.

After college I’d be a bit of a scene girl between being an event producer, a photographer, a researcher, and a singer.

In 2022, a few years after moving to New Orleans for the second time, I joined a collective run gallery called The Front, where I’d incubate my research for curatorial concepts and programming into projects.

Today, I’m finishing my first fellowship at The Charlotte Street Foundation here in Kansas City, Missouri, where I’ve truly found my voice as an interdisciplinary arts curator.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has definitely not been a smooth round. If 17 year old me could have mapped all of this out in Atlanta, I would have never left home. I’d say the most difficult part is balancing the way I’d prefer to navigate institutions, stay upwardly mobile without weaponizing dominance, honor artist development as a transplant, all while being responsible for representing to other landscapes the real culture, and not the tokenized aspects of the places I’ve worked. I spent a lot of my time early on in this journey frustrated and misunderstood. However, the further along I get in my career, the more pride I have in the relationships I’ve built, and the capacity I build out of projects.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Currently in my curatorial practice, I primarily focus on ways to curate ideas of identity and place in interdisciplinary form.

My most recent exhibition in the fellowship, Allegories of Inertia, employed sculptural installation in reference to how the 96′ Summer Olympics broke infrastructural simulations in Atlanta. I curated this in Kansas City, to foreshadow what will be to come
30 years later, in a post FIFA 2026 KC. Much of the work question figurative performativity, in liminal space. In the programming I worked with EleveN2wenty2 Choir and Vaughan Harrison to do a chorale performance as a medal ceremony. I also worth with Alexis Borth, as she choreographed a dance exhibition activation, inspired by Dominique Moceanu’s Devil Went to Georgia Floor Performance.

My upcoming exhibition Geometrica, Pop y Rucas, builds on this dialogue by creating three movements/phases in the gallery between the latine body, architectural futurism, and the midwestern land of the past.

I’m currently working with CSF Resident Alberto Racanati, and students of the UMKC Music Conservatory to create a composition that will be performed in response to the non-linear migratory patterns in the gallery.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Everyone can be subjected to tokenism, but a friend to everyone is friend to none.
This lesson has certainly still pushes me to continuously deepen and challenge my ethos between, peers, collaborators, authority, and friends. Knowing how and when to bear the weight of the hat you’re wearing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://yashidavalos.com
• Instagram: yashidavalos
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yashi-davalos-390438a0/