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 compositions. 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. Recent exhibitions include Building Our Being at Zidoun Bossuyt, Paris, FR (2023) and the major solo show Yashua Klos: OUR LABOUR at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY (2022) curated by Tracy L. Adler, and Yashua Klos: OUR LIVING at Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME (2022). His work was also included in the group exhibitions Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2023) and at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX (2024); Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art at the Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2022); and Africa, Imagined: Reflections on Modern and Contemporary Art at Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI (2022). His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, WA, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI, 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.