South Korean artist Haegue Yang on her upcoming survey show at Hayward Gallery, shamanism, and resisting definition as an artist

Despite the gallery’s pre-eminence, Yang is most confident about the Hayward show. “We are closely attuned; I totally trust him,” she says of Yung Ma, Leap Year’s curator. “I’m interested to see how hands-off I can be for this.”

The extensive exhibition features a large selection of the artist’s works, made from the early 2000s until now, including three new commissions and the recreation of a seminal work, Sadong 30 (2006). The self-started project was conceived from a grassroots perspective, fully outside an institutional framework. In an abandoned house built during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-45) where the artist’s maternal family once lived, located in a dense residential area of Incheon, Yang staged a kind of intervention.

Access to the house was through a series of convoluted alleyways, so the artist printed postcards with a detailed map and the building’s code for visitors to enter; a kind of urban scavenger hunt. Once inside, visitors were greeted by the sight of sculptures composed of found objects and industrial materials— such as origami sculptures, IV stands covered in electrical lights, lamps and drying racks—set amid the raw debris of the uninhabited space.

This was the first work Yang created after being forced to take a break from making art for a year and half to work a full-time job. “2006 was my comeback year,” she says. “I didn’t have time to make [art]work, so I gave up the studio and paid back my debts. I mention this not to glorify the life of a struggling artist but rather to emphasise how unexpected Sadong 30 was.”

The familiarity of the (albeit abandoned) house, contrasted with the unexpected exhibition, highlighted it as a transitional space with the possibility of transformation. In it, Yang achieved a sense of encounter and enigma that would go on to define her work.

A project of many of the artist’s “firsts”, Sadong 30 laid the foundation for and foreshadowed Yang’s practice, and shaped the aesthetic she would come to be known for. It also became symbolic of the artist’s practice on a conceptual level, in making a marginal, almost invisible space visible. She strives to create awareness and reshape perception: “I’m someone who is fascinated by creating something that people think that they know already, but effectively don’t.

Soon after Sadong 30, the artist participated in the São Paulo Biennial, and presented her work Series of Vulnerable Arrangement— Blind Room. It was the first time Yang used Venetian blinds in her work; this was something that made 2006 an even more significant year for her. Flat when closed, 3D when opened, and able to be compressed or expanded, opaque or transparent, blinds became emblematic of Yang’s aesthetic. The functional and transformative qualities inherent in the humble window shades encapsulate what the artist is interested in capturing: the ability to carve out space and manipulate perception.

In 2009, she represented South Korea at the Venice Biennale. She used her presentation, Condensation, as a metaphor for communication. “What happens when you take a cold bottle of water and put it somewhere warm? The change in temperature triggers the bottle to ‘sweat’, as if the water has escaped from inside without being opened—but there are two different bodies of water. [We imagine] a communication between separate spaces ... between inside and outside.

Her interest in challenging established perception is channelled in her ongoing “flat- works”—prints and works on paper that are markedly different to her large, immersive sculptures. A large body of these works are on view at Art Club Chicago. “Flat paper was fascinating for me as a sculptor because it deals with how space can be engineered, generated but also flattened again,” Yang explains.

For her, the act of flattening, or being flat, is equivalent to disappearance, compression, absence; and can be applied conceptually, not only physically. This extends to her recent production of paper-cut works, inspired by Korean shamanic traditions, which she began to make during the pandemic.

Yang’s long-held interest in shamanism and folk rituals was reignited, but from a new perspective, when she was introduced to the idea of paganism in Europe, where she completed her master’s degree and began her career in the late 1990s. She immediately saw parallels between how paganism was considered in Europe and how shamanism functioned in Korea.

“I saw lot of similarity with Korean or any other culture that has a religion that’s not monotheistic and has a ritualistic approach. Shamanism is less institutionalised [than established religion] and even suppressed; [but] even though it’s unprotected, there’s something very resilient about it.” Rather than seeing shamanism’s existence as being relegated from the mainstream, Yang considers it, like paper, as simply flattened. It continued to persist on the edge of mainstream culture, as do many ancient, traditional practices that don’t work in tandem with contemporary social and political structures.

“Religion becomes a power structure, accepted by community, society and nation. Shamanism is something that has been minimally institutionalised but it still continues on the periphery. The bottom line is that these traditions on the periphery are resilient and manage to survive.”

References to folklore and spirituality are consistently present in Yang’s works. Her Contingent Spheres (2020, 2022) installation for this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong Encounters section, for instance, combined two of her existing anthropomorphic sculptures: The Randing Intermediates—Underbelly Alienage Duo and The Intermediate- Five-Legged Frosty Fecund Imoogi. It also included Sonic Cosmic Rope—Gold Dodecagon Straight Weave, which alludes to the Korean folktale Sister Sun and Brother Moon’s Escape. In these sculptures, the artist pays homage to binakol, a Filipino textile motif that in turn references both the 1960s op art movement and a weave that holds significance for the indigenous people of the Cordillera region, who believe it offers protection against dark spirits.

Yang further explores these ideas through new paper work, some of which—part of her Mesmerizing Mesh (2021-) series—is on view at Hayward. Resembling the paper lanterns and flowers Korean shamans used in traditional practices, the sculptures are symbolic of spiritual and sacred ideas and incorporated into rituals.

How shamans use paper in this representational way in particular inspired Yang and made her rethink her role as an artist. “They use the paper as if it could be [the possibility] for anything; that kind of projection of supernatural power onto it—I think that’s also what an artist does,” she says, “whether it’s on paper, stone, bronze, wood or any everyday object. We project something more that goes beyond the physical materiality of the object.”

Leap Year includes the artist’s new commission, Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024)—an installation featuring ascending layers of Venetian blinds, stage lights and a musical score. The work pays homage to Korean composer Isang Yun, who was known for fusing traditional Korean music with western avant garde techniques, and is inspired by his piece Double Concerto (1977).

Whether it’s techniques, histories, beliefs or figures that are plunged into obscurity or marginalised, Yang pulls them out through her works and materialises their existence. Her works become symbolic of modes of transmissions, portals to other dimensions where alternate realities exist, if viewers dare shift their perception. Like her Venetian blinds, Yang reveals the concealed, and conceals what’s revealed; the trick is to remember that the string is your hands.

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