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Double wave, 2008
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Double wave, 2008
Born in the Philippines, she received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, and included in exhibitions at P.S.1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMOMA, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, among others. In 2007 she led counterfeiting workshops at artspaces in Istanbul, Beijing, and Manila. In October 2009 she presented a parasitic art counterfeiting event, "COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone" for Frieze Projects, London, as well as contributed proxy sculptures for P.S.1/MoMA's joint exhibition, "1969." She has taught at Stanford University, The California College of the Arts, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University. A recipient of a 2009 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award, she lives and works in San Francisco (Stephaniesyjuco.com)
Installation
Particular Matter: Things, Thingys, Thingies, 2010
Labor Relations (After Stickley, After Morris), 2008
Upcycled shipping boxes and moving blankets
Several of her shows have focused on housing — not surprising, considering how she spent childhood weekends in Indiana. Her father, a land developer, loaded his six kids (Kennerk was No. 3) into the station wagon. He promised them ice cream, but only after they'd tooled around looking at land.
"I probably knew zoning codes before I knew my times tables," Kennerk said. She also learned how a home or business could imbue meaning on a patch of nothing.
The day Kennerk ran across the abandoned home in her neighborhood, she snapped a photo and began brainstorming: In Las Vegas, the foreclosure notice had become as omnipresent as a stop sign, diluting its symbolic power. How could Kennerk, who teaches sculpture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, present the hallmarks of the housing crisis in a different way?
When she first discussed the project with the Contemporary Arts Center, a small gallery in a gentrifying section of downtown, Kennerk was apprehensive. But director Wendy Kveck was interested in works that carried "emotional weight," even if they were melancholy.
"There is a concern in aestheticizing misery as opposed to confronting it," Kveck said, but she felt the bleakness of Kennerk's work reflected Nevada's woes.
"It has a ghostly quality," she said. "It's a solemn space, almost like a memorial." (LA Times)