Haegue Yang

Her father, Hansoo Yang (born 1945, Seoul), is a journalist and her mother, Misoon Kim (born 1945, Incheon), is a writer.

Hansoo Yang worked for an international construction company after he was dismissed from his job at the Dong-A Ilbo along with 160 colleagues for protesting censorship under Park Chung-hee's regime.

Both Hansoo Yang and Misoon Kim were active in the Minjung Movement.

Yang states that while her work could be seen as conceptual in its broadest definition, and thus drawing from conceptual art from the 1960s and 70s, she believes a redefinition of the term conceptual art is needed for determining its role in contemporary art now.

Yang argues that for her practice, abstraction does not negate the possibility for narrative in her work, but instead "allows a narrative to be achieved without constituting its own limits."

Art historian Joan Kee contends that Yang's interest in formalism "is marked by a sustained attention to morphology, to structure."

Haegue Yang (born December 12, 1971) is a South Korean artist primarily working in sculpture and installation.

Yang was born in South Korea in 1971.

After receiving her B.F.A., Yang moved to Germany and began her artistic career in the late 1990s.

Yang participated in her first show outside of Städelschule at Frankfurt's rraum, an alternative exhibition space in the apartment of Meike Behm and Peter Lütje.

After receiving her B.F.A from Seoul National University in 1994, Yang received an M.A. from Städelschule where she now teaches as a professor of Fine Arts.

She currently lives and works in Berlin and Seoul.

Yang's work often places disparate household objects, including yarn, light fixtures, and fans, into alternative configurations, exploring meanings they can take on outside of their typical functional uses.

She is particularly well known for her installations incorporating venetian blinds that transform galleries through their filtering of light, segmentation of space, and large scale that requires audiences to find multiple viewpoints in order to see the work.

Her installations using materials like bells, moving theater lights, and scent diffusers engage multiple senses by incorporating lights, smells, sounds, and tactile materials that reorient and recalibrate viewers' perception.

Haegue Yang received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) in 1994 from Seoul National University in Korea with a focus on sculpture.

In 1995, she moved to Germany to study with artist Georg Herold at Städelschule.

She was an exchange student at Cooper Union in New York City from 1996 to 1997.

She graduated in 1999 with her Master's (Meisterschüler).

Her first solo show was held in 2000 at Berlin publisher and dealer Barbara Wien's gallery, after Wien met Yang at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1999 and subsequently visited her studio.

Initial difficulties selling Yang's work led to the gallery being unable to store the exhibited pieces, an episode which led to Yang's installation work Storage Piece (2004)–a pile of crates filled with Yang's work on top of shipping pallets.

Yang is currently based in Berlin and Seoul.

Her main studio is located in Kreuzberg, Germany.

Yang draws from a wide array of references, including her own biography, historical events, film, and literature, to create installations like Sadong 30 (2006) and performances like The Malady of Death (2010-ongoing).

Yang sometimes pairs these objects with additional sensorial components, such as steam from a humidifier, temperature changes using a heater and air conditioner, and diffused smells in iterations of her "Series of Vulnerable Arrangements" (2006-8).

Yang began using Venetian blinds in her work in 2006 for a show at BAK, Utrecht.

She became interested in the way blinds can filter light and thus alter conditions of visibility for the viewer.

When responding to questions around the role of feminism in her work, Yang argues that while sculptures like Sallim (shown at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009) can engage with issues around gender in references to housework, they have multiple valences that can extend into religion, immigration, and class.

She has also pushed against the critical emphasis on her diasporic status in interpretations of her practice.

In thinking about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, Yang cites Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose work was shown with Yang in the 2011 show "The Sea Wall": "I say the best thing about aesthetics is that the politics which permeate it are totally invisible."

A number of her works consider movement both within the exhibition space with moving sculptures such as Dress Vehicles (2012), and on a global scale with outdoor commissions like Migratory DMZ Birds on Asymmetric Lens (2020).

She has been a professor of Fine Arts at the Städelschule since 2017.

Her extensive oeuvre includes sculpture, installation, collage, photography, video, and performance.

Curator and art critic Nicholas Bourriaud argues that in spite of the diversity of techniques and mediums, Yang's work is ultimately sculptural in its dealing with the fundamental question of the presence of the body in space.

Her sculptures often feature household objects and mundane materials.

The objects range from drying racks, lightbulbs, yarn, electrical cables, and Venetian blinds.

Yang attributes part of her interest in domestic objects to her upbringing in Korea during the 70s and 80s.

Yang is a particularly prolific contemporary artist–her 2018 catalogue raisonné, published in conjunction with her solo show "ETA" at Museum Ludwig, lists over 1,400 works.

She has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Republic of Korea Cultural and Art Award (Presidential Citation) in the Visual Arts Sector in 2018.

Her work has been collected by museums like The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea, Museum of Modern Art, and Museum Ludwig.