Haegue Yang

Haegue Yang, Long Neck Woman Upside Down, 2016. Installation view at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial 2018: Beautiful world, where are you? Photo: Roger Sinek © Tate Liverpool 

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Haegue Yang (b. 1971, South Korea) lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Seoul, South Korea. Yang’s practice spans a wide range of media, from paper collage to performative sculpture and large-scale multi-sensorial installation, often featuring everyday objects, in addition to labour-intensive woven sculptures. Articulated using her abstract visual vocabulary, her anthropomorphic sculptures often play with the notion of ‘folk’. Her multisensory environments suggest uncontrollable and fleeting connotations of time and place, and experiences that connect us. 

For Liverpool Biennial 2018, Haegue Yang has created an immersive environment for her sculpture series The Intermediates (2015-ongoing) in Tate Liverpool’s Wolfson Gallery. Made from artificial woven straw, The Intermediates allude to both traditional arts and crafts techniques and modern industrial production methods. Representing figures and sites from folk tales and ancient traditions, they question definitions of ‘paganism’. Yang’s environment for these works includes recordings of wildlife taken from the British Library’s sound collection, a wallpaper juxtaposing pagan traditions and modern history, and suspended ribbons that evoke folk traditions such as maypole dancing. Her multisensory, hybrid environments suggest fleeting connotations of time, place, figures and experiences that connect ‘folk’ traditions and contemporary culture.

Selected recent solo exhibitions were at Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2018); KINDL, Berlin, Germany (2017); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2016); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2015); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, France (2013); and Modern Art Oxford (2011).

Haegue Yang at Liverpool Biennial 2018

Dockside Rock and Roll, 2018
In collaboration with Mike Carney
Digital colour print
Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial

The Intermediate series, 2015-2016
Artificial straw, powder-coated stainless steel frame, powder-coated metal grid, plastic raffia string, Indian bells, miniature motorcycles, diorama figures, passive components, artificial plants, artificial vegetables, artificial stones and other
Exhibited at Tate Liverpool