21 Facts About Haegue Yang

Haegue Yang is a South Korean artist primarily working in sculpture and installation.

Haegue Yang is particularly well known for her installations incorporating venetian blinds that transform galleries through their filtering of light, segmentation of space, and large scale that requires audiences to find multiple viewpoints in order to see the work.

Haegue Yang's installations using materials like bells, moving theater lights, and scent diffusers engage multiple senses by incorporating lights, smells, sounds, and tactile materials that reorient and recalibrate viewers' perception.

Haegue Yang has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Republic of Korea Cultural and Art Award in the Visual Arts Sector in 2018.

Haegue Yang's work has been collected by museums like The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea, Museum of Modern Art, and Museum Ludwig.

Hansoo Haegue Yang worked for an international construction company after he was dismissed from his job at the Dong-A Ilbo along with 160 colleagues for protesting censorship under Park Chung-hee's regime.

Haegue Yang was an exchange student at Cooper Union in New York City from 1996 to 1997.

Haegue Yang participated in her first show outside of Stadelschule at Frankfurt's rraum, an alternative exhibition space in the apartment of Meike Behm and Peter Lutje.

Haegue Yang has been a professor of Fine Arts at the Stadelschule since 2017.

Curator and art critic Nicholas Bourriaud argues that in spite of the diversity of techniques and mediums, Haegue Yang's work is ultimately sculptural in its dealing with the fundamental question of the presence of the body in space.

When responding to questions around the role of feminism in her work, Haegue Yang argues that while sculptures like Sallim can engage with issues around gender in references to housework, they have multiple valences that can extend into religion, immigration, and class.

Haegue Yang has pushed against the critical emphasis on her diasporic status in interpretations of her practice.

Haegue Yang began using Venetian blinds in her work in 2006 for a show at BAK, Utrecht.

Haegue Yang became interested in the way blinds can filter light and thus alter conditions of visibility for the viewer.

Haegue Yang reconnected the house's electricity in order to power string lights, illuminating both paper origami as well as the dirt and debris which accumulated after the house's abandonment.

Particular works of Haegue Yang's invoke meetings of historical figures, such as the Venetian blinds in Red Broken Mountainous Labyrinth which refer to Korean independence fighter Kim San and American journalist Nym Wales, and the blinds in Lethal Love that reference head of the German Green Party Petra Kelly and former Bundeswehr General Gert Bastian.

In December 2015, as part of Mobile M+: Live Art, Haegue Yang presented The Malady of Death: Ecrire et Lire, which consisted of a staging of The Malady of Death at Hong Kong's Sunbeam Theatre and the publication of the novella's first Chinese translation.

Haegue Yang's father worked in Libya, Liberia, and other countries in Africa and the Middle East as part of the Jungdong boom that brought more than one million South Korean workers to the Gulf region.

In 2023, Haegue Yang was part of the search committee that chose Emma Enderby as the new director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Haegue Yang participated in the 2006 Sao Paulo Art Biennial, 55th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, 2008 Turin Triennale, dOCUMENTA in Kassel, Biennale de Lyon, Sharjah Biennial, and 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.

Haegue Yang represented South Korea in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.