Referring to her works as 'paintings', Kennedy Yanko's practice revolves around a kind of meditative choreography that occurs as she wraps her malleable paint skins—a concoction of paint and latex—around their found-metal frame. Her work primarily concentrates on colour, according to which she selects her initial scrap metal, and hinges around the juxtaposition and beauty that results in the union of her disparate mediums.
Read MoreAt the age of 20, Yanko created the series 'Wu-Wei' (2009) for Abstrakt Gallery, St. Louis, which became the impetus for transporting paint off the canvas. Inspired by the Daoist concept of 'wu-wei' or 'effortless action', these early works were comprised of layer upon layer of paint pours, through which Yanko moved her brush to produce 'fractal details'. Creating the works in her parents' garage, Yanko left a painting on the slightly slanted floor overnight and returned the next morning to see that some of the paint had dried off the canvas. The almost autonomous change of mediums attracted Yanko to the materiality of paint and inspired her to give it a life of its own.
After growing tired of working with paint skins alone, Yanko apprenticed at an iron-welding factory near her studio in Bushwick in 2016, and was taught how to cut, bend, and mould sheet metal. This eventually lead her to search scrapyards across the East Coast to find metal that would provide the 'skeletal system' for her skins. Her treatment of the found metal warped the original object almost beyond recognition—bar the logos and warning signs still visible on the metal pieces—making it appear at once monumental and weightless. In her series 'HANNAH' (2019), which references Yanko's full name, Hannah Elizabeth Kennedy Yanko, the metal is folded in on itself quite compactly as the paint skin drapes loosely from within like natural phenomena.
In 2020, Yanko created the series 'Salient Queens' for Vielmetter, Los Angeles, which was inspired by funk icon Betty Davis and other women in her life who taught her 'how to take up space'. Each sculpture is named after an influential woman and is representative of the physical and emotional sensation corresponding to her. Micky (2020) is named after the artist Mickalene Thomas, who ushered Yanko into the art world through her 'openness and generosity' and is represented by a cool green-grey metal grate with duck-egg blue paint skin emerging out across the space, almost like a waterfall.
Since establishing herself as an artist, Yanko has also expanded into other performing avenues, making her onscreen debut in Spike Lee's TV show She's Gotta Have It (2017—2019), which wove her fictionalised character with her sculptural works. She also modelled for the fashion label Pyer Moss, walking the runway in their inaugural couture show. In 2021, Yanko created an NFT with musician Masego, who created a musical accompaniment for her sculpture Purity (2018).
