Access: Yashua Klos in Residence

Artist: Yashua Klos

For New York-based artist Yashua Klos, the medium is often the message. Known for his large-scale collages — created using materials he makes through woodblock printing — Yashua has called collage a metaphor for the “fragmentation of African American identity” (Artspace).

Combining depictions of faces or hands with pieces of concrete, cinder block, and wood, or deconstructed cars laced with flowers, Yashua’s work explores the idea that identity forms from environmental and spiritual conditions — and through the process of adapting and thriving.

Born and raised in Chicago, his experience with community, labor, and urban segregation inform his multi-dimensional portrayals of Blackness, which include messages of familial love and political resilience. For instance, he employs flowers “to explore themes of nurturing, tenderness, generosity, and self-care,” he told Colossal.

Woodblock printing, too, holds layers of meaning. “There is no simpler printmaking technique than carving a piece of tree, inking what remains, and pressing a print out of the relief,” he told BOMB Magazine. Originating from ancient Egypt, the technique was used by Yashua’s heroes, 20th-century Black American printmakers Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, to make literal use of environmental elements (trees) to create portraits. And still, in Yashua’s hands, woodblock printing feels fresh, even futuristic.