5 things to know about Haegue Yang: Leap Year

Born in Seoul and now living and working between Seoul and Berlin, Yang is an artist who creates immersive and inventive installations and sculptures. 

Her work draws on history and tradition to highlight contemporary issues and how cultural identities are shifting entities that evolve across time and space.

From October 2024 to January 2025 Hayward Gallery presented Leap Year, the first major survey of Yang in the UK. A comprehensive study of the artist’s work from 1995 to today, it featured key works from some of her most notable series as well as three major new commissions.

With works that resonate on a personal and sensory level, here are five things to know about Haegue Yang and Leap Year.

A number of the works in this exhibition were moving

Literally. Modular structures, geometries and the nature of movements are core considerations in much of Yang’s practice. Within Leap Year this was embodied through a number of sculptures which sit on wheels, enabling them to be moved around the Hayward Gallery at intervals during the exhibition, following set routines. Among the moveable works were the two large sculptures Sonic Dress Vehicle – Hulky Head (2018) and Sol LeWitt Vehicle – 6 Unit Cube on Cube without a Cube (2018) which are adorned with bells, macramé surfaces and blinds.

Blinds leading to blinds

In 2006 Yang created Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Version Utrecht, her first and seminal work to be constructed with Venetian blinds. Drawn to the Venetian blinds for their obliqueness, their semi-transparent quality and their capacity to divide and configure a space, they have become one of the artist’s most iconic and recognisable mediums. 

Yang returned to the medium for Leap Year, which concluded with an ambitious new large-scale Venetian blind commission. Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) is an installation featuring ascending layers of Venetian blinds in varying formations and colours that guide visitors through the space, partnered with two breathing stage lights and a historic musical score. The work is inspired by Double Concerto (1977), created by the late Korean composer and political dissident Isang Yun (1917 – 1995).

Marginalised modernists are among Yang’s key influences

Through her work Yang has often highlighted underrepresented yet pioneering figures of modernism. As well as Isang Yun, Yang has also taken influence from the textile designer, dancer and Dadaist artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889 – 1943) and spiritual composer and dance teacher GI Gurdjieff (1866 – 1949), each of which blurred Eastern and Western cultures in their art. 

Yang’s work also references figures from art history, such as Oskar Schlemmer (1888 – 1943), a sculptor and choreographer prominent in the Bauhaus movement, and the noted American minimalist artist, Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007).

Though influenced by modernists, Yang also employs ancient traditions

Haegue Yang’s ongoing series of collages titled Mesmerising Mesh (2021–) are made from Hanji, washi, graph and origami paper. A type of paper made from the bark of mulberry trees, Hanji has been produced in Korea since ancient times. Yang uses this material, and explores its historical use, as she investigates the relationship between matter and spirituality. The collages of Mesmerising Mesh reference sacred and ritualistic paper objects that are related to shamanism and folk or pagan traditions.

Making light works

Yang’s art works and installations often feature a variety of household and industrial objects. As well as Venetian blinds, she has created works featuring drying racks, hand-knitted yarn, metal-plated bells, nylon pom-poms and light bulbs. The latter were particularly prominent in Leap Year, with a number of the exhibition’s works, such as Non-Indépliables, nues (2010/2020) and 5, Rue Saint-Benoît (2008), serving as sources of light.