Zidoun-Bossuyt Luxembourg presents Burdened by blessings, the first solo exhibition of YoYo Lander with the gallery, from 17 November 2025 to 17 January 2026.

For the first time, YoYo Lander has created works on canvas, expanding her practice while maintaining her intuitive process – using layered, hand-dyed watercolor paper – and culminating in vibrant, textural collages that celebrate the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of her portraits.

Burdened by Blessings is a series of portraits that explore the delicate balance between gratitude and the weight of living. Continuing her ongoing practice of recording people in their most vulnerable, unguarded moments, Lander seeks to reveal the quiet beauty within emotional complexity—the tender spaces where joy and struggle coexist.

Each portrait, including works such as This Can’t Be It, Lukewarm, Sweet and Rye, and I’ll Never Not Like Dandelions (the yellow ones), tells a story of endurance, reflection, and the human need to find meaning in both the gifts and the burdens we carry. The exhibition’s title speaks to the paradox of being fortunate—how even blessings can feel heavy, and how beauty often emerges in that tension. Ultimately, Burdened by Blessings invites viewers to sit with their own contradictions—to see that vulnerability is not weakness, but evidence of life fully felt.

My art explores the essence of humanity. My passion is to use body language as an introduction to the context. Choosing my subjects is very intuitive. I go with what I feel. I take several photographs of my subjects; then, I combine them to express a definitive image through individually stained pieces of watercolor paper. When the work is complete, one will find a sense of truth, perhaps a moment that you’ve seen or experienced. My aesthetic is visceral and expressive. What begins with a strictly defined intent, composition, and color scheme is rarely visible in the finished piece. Layers of cut and stained watercolor paper are strategically placed over rough sketches. This is a shift in my artistic approach, in which the context now plays a significant role in the depiction of the individual(s). » YoYo Lander’s arresting collages celebrate the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of her Black subjects. Lander highlights intricacies of bodies and movement and compellingly captures the demeanor of her subjects. She takes several photographs of each of her sitters to use as reference material, then combines those perspectives into singular compositions by layering cut pieces of dyed watercolor paper on top of canvas, resulting in textural, multihued bodyscapes.