Biography:
Haegue Yang (b. 1971, Seoul) lives and works between Berlin and Seoul. Yang’s work links biographical narratives, disparate histories, and traditions through the language of abstraction, often articulated and obscured with her signature materiality, venetian blinds. She is also known for working with a vast range of media—from paper collage to performative sculpture and room-scaled sensorial installations, employing a variety of techniques and their cultural connotations. Often demarcated with blinds, her multisensory environments treat issues such as subjectivity and alterity from the oblique vantage of the aesthetic. A recipient of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize (2018) and the 13th Benesse Prize at the Singapore Biennale (2022), Yang has had solo exhibitions at museums worldwide, including S.M.A.K., Ghent, BE (2023); National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, AU (2023); Pinacoteca de São Paulo, BR (2023); Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, DK (2022) and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, DE (2018). Her works are collected by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, US; Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; and Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, KR; among others; and were exhibited at the South Korean Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, DE (2013). This fall, the Arts Club of Chicago and the Hayward Gallery, London will present Yang’s solo exhibitions.
Work:
Haegue Yang, Lethal Love, 2008
aluminium venetian blinds, powder-coated aluminium hanging structure, steel wire rope, self-adhesive mirror vinyl film, moving spotlights, scent emitters (White Tea and Fig, Gunpowder)
Courtesy of the artist
Haegue Yang’s installation Lethal Love (2008) incubates the tragic story of Petra Kelly (1947–1992) and Gert Bastian (1915–1992), an unlikely couple from greatly different generations and backgrounds. Kelly was a central figure in the birth of the German Green Party, while Bastian was a former Wehrmacht officer and general of the German Armed Forces. As they became prominent in German politics, their sudden deaths were a shock with Bastian allegedly killing Kelly before committing suicide. The co-memorial event later hosted by the Green Party however, dismissed the perception of Bastian as a murderer. Their significant political careers and devoted public life masked Kelly’s serious psychological instability and the resulting extreme isolation, possibly leading to the one-sided decision by Bastian to put an end to her life. Their deaths led to a domino effect of unanswered questions, public confusion, and subsequently oblivion. Yang focuses on the inevitable yet agonizing pairings between private and public, life and work, exposure and obscurity, and light and shadow in their story. Doubled by mirrored vinyl on the entire length of the wall, the space of Lethal Love is physically configured by venetian blinds with perforated slats named ‘gun metal’ and activated by scents and light choreography. Equipped with motion sensors, two scent emitters release the scent of flowers and explosives. Light of different intensities shines on the surface of the venetian blinds; one powerful floodlight breathes on and off slowly along the central axis, while on the sides, two moving lights, broken into three rotating prismatic circles, wander contemplatively up and down the blind installation. Thus, Lethal Love sets up a physical situation where death is present as much as life, juggling between the public light of a couple and their private shadow.
