BIOGRAPHY

Yashua Klos approaches the idea of identity as multi-faceted, adaptive, and ever-changing. He explores identity as a composite of self-conception, family histories, environmental influences, and mythologies. In his portraiture and collage work, Klos explores how material and social conditions shape one’s identity and experience of moving through the world. His process employs a unique intervention on the traditional method of woodblock printing: carving, inking, and hand-pressure printing to create his own source material for collaging. He then cuts and arranges these separate printed elements to form exquisitely textured, amalgamated portraits.

Fractured small elements converge to create larger whole images, which are also representational, and often portraits. These figures emerge from a substrate that reference Detroit’s Art Deco and woodblock printing tradition as key elements to Klos’ own familial and artistic identity. This complex materiality echoes the psychological layers of identity that comprise Klos’ subjects. Through his use of scale and reference to construction materials- the artist seems to align the act of Black representational image making to the act of building statues or monuments. Perhaps a sculptor at heart, Klos transforms his two-dimensional collages into three-dimensional illusions, works that are at once flat and appear built out, more like sculptural reliefs. Klos’ constructions lead one into an imaginary landscape, at once ancient and futuristic, classic and sci-fi, where identity is both in question and shockingly evident.

Yashua Klos (b. 1977, Chicago, IL; lives in Harlem and works in the Bronx, NY) is a visual artist whose practice employs a distinctive process of collaging his own woodblock‑printed textures to explore Blackness as an adaptive material for survival strategies.
He has exhibited his work at institutions such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; What If The World, Johannesburg, South Africa; Tilton Gallery, New York, NY; and UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA. His first solo museum exhibition was presented in 2022 at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, and he has been awarded residencies at Skowhegan, Madison, ME; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. He is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Fellowship and a NYFA grant.
His works are held in numerous public and private collections, including: AMOCA Wales, Cardiff, UK; Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Indianapolis, IN; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Pierce & Hill Harper Foundation, Detroit, MI; The Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; The Petrucci Family Foundation Collection, Asbury, NJ.
His recent activity includes participation in « Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage » at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX, as well as the Fountainhead Residency, Miami Beach, FL. Yashua Klos will present his next solo exhibition in September 2026 at Zidoun‑Bossuyt Luxembourg.