bex ya yolk (they/them) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, graphic designer, book maker, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk received a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a concentration in Book Arts as a full merit scholar. yolk has received grant endowment and recognition from the Atlanta Contemporary, Codex International Biennial Artists' Book Fair and Symposium, the College Book Art Association, Secret Riso Club, VCUarts Adjunct Faculty Research, the Judith Alexander Foundation, and was most recently nominated for a 3Arts grant in the Teaching Arts. yolk has been invited as an artist-in-residence at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago Artists Coalition, Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI, ACRE in Steuben, WI, Real Time and Space in Oakland, CA, and Aviário Studio in Ferreira do Zêzere, Portugal. 

Since 2019 yolk's creative practice has operated as an independent artists’ book bindery and publishing initiative— THUNGRY which focuses on disrupting what qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of Book building + semantics by means of experimentation and queering praxis. Through the misuse of esoteric materials yolk aims to derange the language that bookbinding historically assumes. THUNGRY exhibits at artists' book fairs across the country, steadily establishing a national presence known for exploring topics in care work, rematriation, container technics, queer theologies, abortion access activism, maternal identities, and reproductive justice in the U.S highlighting the intersectionalities between the Book + the bodies this research pertains.

Headshot: MJ Minutoli

Image: bex ya yolk, the book of every title, 2023, plywood, Tyvek, LED, ink, Migra Italic typeface, sand, 3' x 8'

(updated 2025)