The Yupanki Project is a conceptual work spanning several mediums. Gregg Yupanki Bautista places himself in the roles of writer, musician, and artist to weave together a space that collectively tells a story of time migrants.

The project began as an art residency exercise to explore mediums unrelated to his paintings and find a way to still have each influence the other. While working on paintings, Gregg began these explorations by pulling out his guitar, tucked away for almost a decade, and purchasing a loop station. He began composing short ambient songs, or sound sketches, by building layers of sound into the looper, each track altered by a few effect pedals he had also tucked away. Along with those sketches, he began writing a handful of one- or two-line poems that leaned into surreal and pre-Columbian imagery, having also been drawn to poetry at the time.

As he spent more time with these nascent ideas, the sound sketches began growing into more complete ideas, creating an atmospheric group of instrumental ambient songs that would dip into other genres like rock and Latin. The short poems unfolded into longer forms and short stories. Out from this growing world stepped a lost time migrant named Yupanki who was in search of who, what, where, and when "home" could be. Memory, nature, and old gods also emerged as themes, along with undertones of contending with the lasting effects of colonialism and erasure.

The written and music aspect were brought into tangible form through an EP titled Un Lugar Lejos (2022) and an illustrated poetry chapbook titled Un Lugar Lejos: Valleys (Echo Thread Books, 2024). The poems and music in this part of the conceptual story finds Yupanki wandering through a mystical valley loosely based on the Sacred Valley.

The story having become a complete idea, Gregg began performing the songs at different venues under the name Yupanki, channeling the titular character of the story.

As he continues to write, compose, and paint in this world, Gregg hopes that The Yupanki Project can be seen as a project of homage to the Andes, indigenous peoples, resistance to empire, and the struggle for collective liberation.