American artist Kennedy Yanko is bringing a new body of large-scale sculpture to Paris this autumn, as part of the citywide public program accompanying Art Basel Paris. Her exhibition, titled 'Ce qui nous rassemble' ('What brings us together'), runs from October 16, 2026 to January 3, 2027 at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, the museum devoted to plaster casts of classical and religious architecture that frames the Eiffel Tower. The show is curated by Matthieu Poirier. Yanko's starting point is an apocryphal tale of Mary Magdalene crossing the Mediterranean to settle in the south of France. During a residency in that region, she found herself drawn to the figure and began reworking her legacy, questioning how she was recast across the centuries as virgin, penitent, mother and lover. The artist describes her massive works, assembled from dried skeins of poured paint and salvaged metal, as three-dimensional Abstract Expressionist paintings whose painted 'skins' carry associations of body, identity and fragility. Raised in a Seventh-day Adventist household in St. Louis, Yanko has long researched spirituality through the lenses of Theosophy, the occult and Surrealism, citing Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and Wassily Kandinsky among her references. She also traces her discipline to years with New York's Living Theatre under Judith Malina, which she calls her true university, and to a fascination with Jacques-Louis David, whose ability to render political passion and drama she admires. The Paris presentation sits within an expanded Art Basel Paris public program, supported by Miu Miu as official partner, that spreads installations and exhibitions across the French capital during the fair, which takes place at the Grand Palais from October 23 to 25. Yanko, now working from a studio in Miami, also spoke of Paris as the city where she researches, noting how artists such as Josephine Baker and James Baldwin once found refuge there.