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, born in 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, is a visual artist based in Harlem and working in the Bronx. His practice centers on a distinctive process of collaging woodblock-printed textures to explore Blackness as an adaptive material for survival strategies. His work has been exhibited widely across the United States and internationally, including at the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina; What If The World in Johannesburg, South Africa; Tilton Gallery in New York City; and UTA Artist Space in Los Angeles. In 2022, he presented his first solo museum exhibition at the Wellin Museum of Art in Clinton, New York. Klos’ work has been reviewed in The New York Times, and he has received residencies at Skowhegan, the Vermont Studio Center, and Bemis. He is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Fellowship and a NYFA grant. His work is included in numerous public and private collections: The Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Studio Museum, NY; The Wellin Museum of Art, NY; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI; Zuckerman Museum of Art, GA; Seattle Museum of Art, WA; Pierce & Hill Harper Foundation, MI; The Pizzuti Collection, OH; and The Petrucci Family Foundation. Recent exhibitions include Artistry Abounds: Selections From The Collection of Arthur Primas at the Irving Arts Center, Irving, TX (2025); Ancestral: Afro-Americas [United States and Brazil] at the FAAP Museum of Brazilian Art, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); and Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage at both The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX. (2024)