Kennedy Yanko

Kennedy Yanko (b. 1988, St. Louis MO) is a sculptor and installation artist whose works in salvaged metal and paint skin defy the limitations of their respective media. Sourcing junkyard scraps from Brooklyn to Miami, Yanko overlays these crushed metallic frames with lush “skins” which she produces by heaving gallons of latex paint onto her studio floor, letting it harden into a malleable fabric-like shroud. Over the last year, her monochrome skins have increasingly embraced a more kaleidoscopic, painterly approach, reflecting an Abstract Expressionist sensibility. While this luxuriant draping appears weightless, the process of moulding them into the gestural folds and crevices of their metal bases requires significant strength. This transmutation of material finds root in the artist’s lifelong commitment to Daoist principles, which foreground both a harmonious coexistence with nature and a willingness to see beyond the immediately visible.

In 2024 the artist’s work was included in Gazing Bodies, CF Hill, Stockholm (SE); In an effort to be held, The Shepherd, Detroit (MI); Stories that need to be told, Firestorm Collection, Stockholm (SE); The Beauty of Diversity, Albertina Museum, Vienna (AT); and Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, which traveled to the Brooklyn Museum (NY); the High Museum, Atlanta (GA); and is now on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MN) until July 2025. In 2023 Yanko unveiled two public sculpture commissions: Crystallized Tears at Arkansas State Park, Little Rock; and Tilted Lift, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (MI). In 2021 Yanko was Artist-in-Residence at the Rubell Museum, Miami (FL).

Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including Albertina Museum, Vienna (AT); the Brooklyn Museum (NY); Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach (FL); Firestorm Foundation, Stockholm (SE); Rubell Museum, Miami (FL); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MA); Pérez Art Museum, Miami (FL); Ståhl Collection, Norrköping (SE); and The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach (FL), among others.