Kah Yangni
Kah Yangni is a Philadelphia-based illustrator whose vibrant, collage-inspired artwork explores justice, queerness, and joy. Their work has appeared on billboards, murals—including a 2,250-square-foot public piece—and in collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Kah illustrated Not He or She, I’m Meby A.M. Wild, a 2024 Stonewall Book Award Honor Book, and The Making of Butterflies by Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi. Their art has been featured in NBC News, Ebony Magazine, Mic, and them, and they were recently featured on PBS Kids' Albie’s Elevator.
Key Sites
Commentaries, Interviews, and Lectures
- Yangni, K. (2022, July 18). Breathe it in/let it go: This is the first piece in a series about being with how you feel. Artist-In-Residence 2022.
- Benner, C. (Host). (2021, December 23). Kah Yangni and centering trans people in public art (Season 4, Episode 7]). In Streets Dept Podcast
- ArtWorks Cincinnati. (2021, June 16). Mental health and self-care in the arts. ArtWorks Viva Voce artist conversation
Academic References
- Bey, Marquis, and Jesse A. Goldberg, eds. Queer Fire: Liberation and Abolition. Duke University Press, 2022.
- Cornell, Meg. "Not He or She, I'm Me by AM Wild." Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 77.3 (2023): 118-118.
- Cox, Lara. "MAP-ping queerness? Street art in Philadelphia." Transatlantica. Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal 2 (2023).
- Edwards, A. (2024). Youth Voice/Youth Action/Youth Justice. Experiments in Democracy, 1(1), 21-32.
- Feng, Julie. "The Genesis of Our Freedom: Constituting a queer of color commons through public art." Communication and Race (2025): 1-13.
- Goessling, K. P., Wright, D. E., Wager, A. C., & Dewhurst, M. (Eds.). (2021). Engaging youth in critical arts pedagogies and creative research for social justice : opportunities and challenges of arts-based work and research with young people. Routledge.
- Hayes, Kelly, and Mariame Kaba. Let this radicalize you: Organizing and the revolution of reciprocal care. Haymarket Books, 2023.
- Kafai, Shayda. Crip kinship: The disability justice and art activism of Sins Invalid. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.
- Kernahan, Louis Joe. "The power of the image and the role of social representations in iconographic reproduction: the pink triangle." Papers on Social Representations 32.2 (2023): 3-1.
- Revolution, J. (2019). Youth Activism, Art, and Transitional Justice. New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art, and Memory, 63.
