YASHUA KLOS
B. 1977

In his multi-media practice, Yashua Klos explores themes of identity, memory, and African Americans' relationship to American labor. His large-scale works are created from the intricate formation of woodblock prints, representing ideas of Blackness through multi-dimensional, fragmented portraits. Unlike traditional collage arranged from ready-made source material, Klos creates all his collage material through woodblock printing and monotypes. His work reimagines the Black body as an alchemical being, surviving and existing within intertwined networks of history, myth, and lived reality.

Yashua Klos (b. 1977, Chicago, IL) received a BFA from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (2000) and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York (2009), both in Fine Art. A major solo institutional show, Yashua Klos: OUR LABOUR, curated by Tracy L. Adler, was presented at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, in 2022. Other notable exhibitions include Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2023), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2024), and the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2024); Yashua Klos: OUR LIVING, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME (2022); Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2022); and Africa, Imagined: Reflections on Modern and Contemporary Art at Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI (2022).

Klos’ work is included in the permanent collections of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI; the Seattle Art Museum, WA; and the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. He has been awarded residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, BRIC Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center, Skowhegan, and the Vermont Studio Center. Klos is the recipient of a 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant and a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. Klos lives and works in Harlem, NY, and the Bronx, NY, respectively.

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