bex ya yolk (b. Richmond, VA, 1994) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, book maker, researcher, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design with a concentration in Book Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 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, VCUarts Adjunct Faculty Research, and the Judith Alexander Foundation. yolk has been invited as an artist-in-residence at 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. They are the senior designer at Cita Press, an independent publishing platform promoting open access, public-domain works of feminist literature.

yolk is the founder of an artists’ book bindery + publishing initiative—THUNGRY which focuses on disrupting what we’ve come to understand qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics through experimentation and queering praxis. THUNGRY explores historical research, sociology, and speculative theory into 'the Maternal Complex' made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, rematriation, container technologies, abortion access activism, reproductive justice and health care disparity in the U.S, the maternal identity, matrescence, and the gestational state especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + this kind of body.

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

Headshot: MJ Minutoli