Embraced by Wildflowers, Black Figures Emerge Defiantly Resilient in Yashua Klos’s Collaged Portraits

Early in the morning of July 23, 1967, police raided an after-hours, unlicensed bar known colloquially as a “blind pig”—a speakeasy—on the Near West Side of Detroit. Law enforcement expected only a few customers inside, but to their surprise, more than 80 people were in attendance for a party celebrating GIs returning from the Vietnam War. The police decided to arrest everyone, and by the time they were through, a sizable and angry crowd had gathered outside to witness the raid.

A doorman named William Walter Scott III, whose father ran the blind pig, later detailed in a memoir that by throwing a bottle at a police officer, he incited what came next: the most violent riot in the country since 1863. The clash emerged as the bloodiest of a series of more than 150 race riots that erupted in cities around the nation during the long, hot summer of 1967. Spurred by racial segregation, recent police reforms and policing inequity, an economic crisis, inadequate housing projects, a practice known as redlining—financial services discriminatorily withheld from neighborhoods with significant populations of racial and ethnic minorities—and many other factors, tensions finally erupted.

Yashua Klos’s family in Detroit was profoundly impacted by the strain and chaos of the riots. Raised in Chicago and now based in the Bronx, the artist (previously) is researching the history of riots for Black justice in the U.S., from Newark to Los Angeles. “In New York, during the uprisings around George Floyd’s murder, I saw a lot of media blaming riot violence on the same vulnerable populations being killed by law enforcement,” he tells Colossal. “I’m also thinking about how Black populations rebuild and carry on afterward—how the wildflowers keep sprawling after the smoke dies down.”

Wildflowers play a crucial role in his mixed-media pieces, which combine woodblock prints, paper, paint, colored pencil, and wood into multifaceted portraits. He incorporates blooms native to Michigan to illustrate the “defiant resilience” of his family. “In the work, I’m thinking about the ways my aunts make space for our family affairs,” he says. “The women in my family organize and cook for parties, funerals, and reunions, all while raising children and working jobs. The hands I depict are their hands—resisting work and taking a moment with the wildflowers for self-care.”

Klos is interested in broader questions around Black Americans’ relationship with self-care within the context of the country’s economy, interrogating the “assumption that the Black body is designed for labor,” he says. “I also see pressures on Black women to prioritize space-making for family over their own health.” He surrounds the figures’ faces with decorative and geometric details as if growing beyond limitations or constraints. Vines and flowers wind around hands and cheeks, tender yet insistent reminders of resourcefulness and determination. “Wildflowers are about a kind of ‘space-taking’ or sprawling,” Klos says. “They grow and bloom without permission.”

Klos currently has work in Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., which continues through September 22, and Double ID at The Wright in Detroit, which remains on view through October 20. The artist is also working toward his first solo exhibition with Vielmetter Los Angeles, slated for spring 2025. Find more on his website, and follow Instagram for updates.

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