Kennedy Yanko

Kennedy Yanko (b. 1988) is a St Louis born, Miami based sculptor, painter, and installation artist. Yanko works primarily with found objects and paint skins. To create her paint skin sculptures, gallons of paint are poured onto a surface and left to partially dry, forming a tarp-like surface. The surface is lifted and shaped, and subsequently fitted into metal armatures which Yanko welds and bends into precise shapes. 

Yanko uses full body motion and manipulation to mould these large sheets of paint into vast folds that appear natural, almost organic. Despite their actual weight, size, and strength it takes to shape them, the sculptures take on a floating, weightless quality. Although her creations are labelled as sculptures, Yanko sees herself as a painter, the metal and skins becoming paint strokes in her hands. 

Most recently, in 2026 Yanko debuted a new series of works that fuse paint and metal at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. 

In 2024 Yanko began experimenting with handmade paper to create new multilayered works at Pace Paper studio in New York. To make these works she pours, stains, and manipulates highly pigmented paper pulp, echoing the draped paint skins of her sculptural work.

Yanko, who staged her first solo exhibition in 2010, has been included in significant exhibitions at The Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine (2026); Minneapolis Institute of Art (2025); Albertina Modern (2024); Brooklyn Museum (2022; 2024); CFHill (2022); Parrish Art Museum (2022); Rubell Museum (2021), where she was the 2021-2022 Artist in Residence and first sculptor to hold the residency; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2019). 

Yanko’s work is held in major private and institutional collections such as Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, FL; Espacio Tacuari, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Firestorm Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Rubell Museum, Miami, FL; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Ståhl Collection, Norrköping, Sweden; and Stora Väsby Sculpture Park, Upplands Väsby, Sweden.