American sculptor, painter, and installation artist
Kennedy Yanko
Born
1988 (age36–37)
Saint Louis, Missouri, US
Occupation(s)
Painter, sculptor, installation artist
Kennedy Yanko (born October 21, 1988, in St. Louis, Missouri)[1][2] is an American sculptor, painter and installation artist known for working with "paint skins" and found metal.[3] Yanko sources discarded objects and other material from salvage yards and manipulates or modifies their form, shape, or structure into her vision. Her abstract work draws upon surrealism, abstract expressionism and physical austerities and her background in performance art.[3][4][5]
To create “paint skins,” Yanko pours large amounts of paint and lets it dry into a tarp-like material. From there, she sculpts the paint skin, using her whole body to manipulate the heavy sheet of paint. The paint skin thus becomes a structural material not dissimilar from the metal she utilizes in her sculptures. At times, the two materials are indistinguishable.[6]
In 2023, she presented the solo exhibition Kennedy Yanko: Tilted Lift at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, as part of this institution's Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead lawn program.[7] In 2024, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, acquired her wild wild country (2023) as part of its PAMM Fund for Black Art.[8]
Public art
In 2019, Yanko installed her first public sculpture, titled 3 WAYS, as part of the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition,[9] funded by the Helis Foundation, in New Orleans.[10]
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