Haegue Yang: Leap Year

Leap Year brought together a world of inventive, immersive and multisensory installations and sculptures from Haegue Yang that weave connections between disparate histories, cultures and traditions.

Haegue Yang’s work spans a vast range of media – from paper collage to performative sculpture and immense sensorial installations. And her inspiration is equally wide-ranging, drawing on diverse histories and customs, including East Asian traditions and folklore, modernism, contemporary art history and nature.

Within her work Yang uses a variety of crafts, techniques and materials tapping into the cultural connotations they carry. Her pieces often feature household and industrial objects, including drying racks, light bulbs, metal-plated bells, nylon pom-poms, hand-knitted yarn and hanji (Korean paper).

Featured as one of autumn 2024’s must-see exhibitions in Time Out, Forbes, Londonist and Condé Nast, Leap Year was the first major survey of the internationally celebrated artist to be presented in the UK. It offered a comprehensive study of Yang’s work from the early 2000s to today, highlighting how her artworks resonate on a personal and sensory level while also speaking to social, political and spiritual ideas.

The exhibition featured key works from some of her most notable series, including Light Sculptures and Sonic Sculptures, complemented by three new major commissions and a number of new productions. These works brought together a wide spectrum of visual and sensory experiences through the mediums of installation, sculpture, collage, text, video, wallpaper and sound.

‘surreal, exuberant… uplifting, festive’

The Telegraph

‘a bold and diverse display of contemporary art, mixing materials and ideas in unexpected ways’

The Conversation