Book of Yona - Artist Statement

As a New York City–based artist named Yona (Jonah), and as someone who immigrated from Europe, I create work that reimagines the ancient prophet’s story through the lens of personal mythology, cultural transition, and urban dislocation. My paintings explore the tension between flight and return, isolation and transformation—universal themes that resonate more sharply when you’ve crossed an ocean and reshaped your life.

In Jonah, I see a figure perpetually suspended between resistance and redemption, fleeing destiny only to find that the path circles back, inward. My paintings use this archetype as a mirror, reflecting the complexities of self-exile, return, and transformation in a contemporary world.

In my visual retelling, the Mediterranean becomes the East River—a body of water still and surging, dividing boroughs like it divides destinies. Jonah’s whale is no longer a sea creature, but a silent submarine: a man-made vessel of containment, descent, and introspection. These substitutions aren't just symbolic; they reframe the myth within the language of the modern world, where the sacred often hides in steel and glass, and where calling and crisis are woven into the urban fabric.

My process is rooted in layering—both conceptually and materially; the images collapse time and place. Biblical narrative meets city infrastructure. Sacred texts overlap subway maps. Prophecy is cast in neon. The result is a hybrid space where personal identity, spiritual inquiry, and cityscape coalesce.

Naming myself through Jonah invites a constant wrestling—with legacy, with language, with the act of telling the story differently. This body of work isn’t about answers; it’s about being inside the questions. What does it mean to be swallowed whole? To be spat out and begin again? And how do those acts play out not in a desert or ancient port, but under scaffolding, in apartment stairwells, or at the river’s edge?

This is the Jonah I know: one who runs through New York City, dives into metaphors, and surfaces—changed, but still asking.