Pregnant Mountains – Trustworthy #316

Haegue Yang works with commonplace, mass-produced materials whose aesthetic presence and potential are often overlooked, including space heaters, light bulbs, synthetic straw, Venetian blinds, supply catalogues, and jingle bells. From the detritus of consumerism, she builds fantastical installations that take on anthropomorphic and psychedelic qualities. In her Trustworthy series, Yang inverts the body of security envelopes, dissecting and rearranging their interior pattern and color into kaleidoscopic collages. These mesmerizing works are an oblique reference to the hidden communications and transactions that continuously circle the globe, shaping our world from the shadows. In one incisive act, Yang splits them open and lets their colorful secrets spill out. For Pregnant Mountains - Trustworthy # 316, Yang arranged a grouping of Trustworthy collages into a constellation of twinkling polychrome stars against a field of gold leaf.

About the artist 

Haegue Yang  b. 1971, Seoul, South Korea

Haegue Yang seeks to communicate without language in a primordial and visual way: often complementing her vocabulary of visual abstraction with sensory experiences that include scent, sound, light and tactility. Combining industrial fabrication and folk craftsmanship, Yang explores the affective power of materials in destabilizing the distinction between the modern and pre-modern. Yang’s unique visual language extends across various media (from paper collage to staged theatre pieces and performative sculptures), and materials (Venetian blinds, clothing racks, synthetic straw, bells and graph paper) that are torn, lacquered, woven, lit and hung. Her artistic explorations stem from material-based concerns, accompanied by philosophical, political and emotionally charged readings of historical events and figures. Her ongoing research is empowered by underlying references to art history, literature and political history, through which she re-interprets some of her recurrent themes: migration, postcolonial diasporas, enforced exile and social mobility. As a result, these pieces link various geopolitical contexts and histories in an attempt to understand and comment on our own time. Yang’s translation from the political and historical into the formal and abstract, demonstrates her conviction that historical narratives can be made comprehensible without being linguistically explanatory or didactic. 

Haegue Yang lives and works in Berlin and Seoul.

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