Installation view of 《Leap Year》 © Hayward Gallery

Since last October, Haegue Yang’s large-scale solo exhibition 《Haegue Yang: Leap Year》, currently on view at the Hayward Gallery in London, unfolds like a vast labyrinth. The exhibition is a labyrinth of time in that it brings together over two decades of the artist’s practice, and a labyrinth of space in that it structures the exhibition through a constellation of thematic keywords.

From early representative works such as Storage Piece (2004) and her first solo exhibition in Korea, 《Sadong 30》 (2006), to newly commissioned works including Windy Terrace Beyond Reach (2024), more than 120 works collectively present a sweeping view of Yang’s artistic vision, appearing like a caravan that traverses the boundaries between materiality and perception. This trajectory encapsulates the traces of movement that Yang has produced since the early 2000s as a “nomadic artist.”

Once preoccupied with questions of identity—at once choosing and resisting the condition of being an outsider—Yang now assumes the role of creating and reconfiguring “mobile beings.” Nomadic elements borrowed from different cultural contexts intertwine intricately from the beginning to the end of the exhibition, offering a view beyond boundaries. Ultimately, the museum functions not merely as a site for revisiting past achievements, but as a space that demonstrates the continual expansion of Yang’s practice. In this sense, 《Haegue Yang: Leap Year》 marks yet another point of “leap” in her career.
 

Clicking, Jingling

The first work to greet visitors upon entering the gallery is the newly commissioned Sonic Droplets in Gradation – Aquatic Curtain (2024). Beneath a structure reminiscent of traditional East Asian wooden architecture, blue and silver metallic bells hang like elongated curtains, forming a sensory threshold.

Visitors must pass through the work itself—encountering unpredictable bell sounds along the way—in order to enter the exhibition space. At the same time, the clicking sound emanating from the slide projection Outside There (2006) reveals the concealed mechanics behind real estate advertisements that once captivated the public at a pace faster than the images themselves could change.

Suggesting how so-called “modern architecture” in mid- to late-20th-century Korea “lost to history in terms of beauty and to construction in terms of the sublime,” this work reflects Yang’s early concerns with urban development, modernity, and the interplay between fiction and ideal. When early works and newly produced pieces from nearly two decades later are placed within the same space, the differing auditory stimuli generated by each work symbolically articulate the multilayered nature of the exhibition.

 
Living Gestures and Material

On the first floor, works such as Sol LeWitt Vehicle – 6 Unit Cube on Cube without a Cube (2018) and Sonic Dress Vehicle – Robust Head (2018) occupy the central space against the backdrop of the digital color print Various Totems (2013). The surrounding walls are painted in a deep ultramarine hue, to which the title Quasi–Yves Klein Blue (2024) is assigned.

Through this gesture, Haegue Yang simultaneously pays homage to so-called “role models” of Western art such as Sol LeWitt and Yves Klein, while subtly destabilizing their authority and legitimacy. For instance, the repetitive and mechanical arrangement of structures evokes Minimalism, yet Yang’s attempt to disrupt geometric order and introduce movement overturns the fixed conventions inscribed in art history. Each work is activated on scheduled occasions by professionally trained facilitators, allowing the objects to traverse the boundaries between performance and sculpture and to acquire a sense of dynamism.
 
In the following space, the ongoing The Intermediate series (2015–) appears in succession, resembling a kind of tribe composed of human-like sculptures. Combining traditional Korean craft techniques with contemporary materials, this body of work draws inspiration from folk narratives found across the world, resulting in handcrafted forms made from artificial straw, shells, palm fibers, and yarn. Displayed alongside them, the hanji collage series Mesmerizing Nets (2021–) embodies a shamanistic spirituality through East Asian paper and patterns.

These beings, endowed with diverse physical forms, seem to materialize animism and, further, philosopher Jane Bennett’s concept of “vibrant matter.” They are not inert forms but active agents pulsating with energy that challenges an anthropocentric worldview. Positioned at the heart of the exhibition space, they prompt viewers to reconsider the vitality of the nonhuman and to perceive the voices of entities that have long remained silent.


Installation view of 《Leap Year》 © Hayward Gallery

Whispering Memory and a Field of Struggle

Haegue Yang has long practiced a form of subtle “subversion” through a political language that does not announce itself overtly. A representative example is Rotating Notes (2013), which is relatively inconspicuous, partly concealed by the presence of Yves Klein blue. Notes affixed with magnets to a metal board densely record, like clues in a detective novel, the lives of individuals—artists, historians, professors—who have directly experienced political conflict.

The work quietly traces the growth and identity of individuals shaped by historical upheavals. At the same time, by juxtaposing seemingly unrelated subjects—such as Holocaust survivors, Zainichi Koreans, and Palestinian children—it powerfully demonstrates how a shared universality emerges across disparate experiences, revealing the complex dynamics and interrelations of contemporary society.
 
Similarly, 5, Rue Saint-Benoît (2008), also shown in the Hayward Gallery’s 2010 exhibition 《The New Décor》, addresses the “private space” as a site of political struggle and survival. The title derives from the Paris address of writer Marguerite Duras, whose apartment served as a meeting place for members of the Resistance during World War II.

Yang visualizes this history through everyday household appliances such as a boiler, refrigerator, and washing machine, suggesting that ordinary objects and domestic spaces can function not only as sites of personal life but also as stages for collective resistance and memory. At the same time, the work delicately metaphorizes the transformation of a typical private domain into a space of public resistance.
 
The exhibition concludes with the newly commissioned installation Unevenly Leaped Rendezvous (2024), a large-scale work inspired by composer Isang Yun’s Double Concerto (1977). Having gone into exile in Germany amid the turmoil of a divided Korea, Yun developed a musical language that bridged Eastern and Western traditions, making him a long-standing point of reference in Yang’s practice.

Like Yang’s own worldview, his work embodies an artistic methodology that transcends geographic and political boundaries, as well as the experience of diaspora. Notably, in October 2024, when Yang’s exhibition opened, a retrial of the “East Berlin Incident” began, revisiting the case in which Yun was accused of espionage due to his contacts with North Korean figures while in Germany, leading to his conviction and imprisonment in 1967—now reconsidered 57 years later. As light and shadow are cast through layered, bridge-like blinds, a 35-minute musical loop is followed by an intentional 70 minutes of silence, constructing a narrative that contrasts the fleeting joy of reunion with the prolonged pain of separation.


Installation view of 《Leap Year》 © Hayward Gallery

Alchemy of the Unknowable

From the moment it opened, the exhibition quickly became the subject of sharply divided critical responses in the UK. For instance, The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones gave it a scathing one-star review shortly after its opening. A week later, however, art historian Julian Stallabrass responded with a rebuttal, praising the originality and depth of Haegue Yang’s work.

This wide spectrum of reception can be understood as stemming from an intrinsic quality of Yang’s practice—its “unknowability.” It also attests to the artist’s approach of maintaining a delicate balance between fascination and enigma. Within this space, interpretations and perspectives proliferate without limit.
 
In this sense, the exhibition resembles alchemy in its traditional meaning. Objects once considered mundane or even worthless—such as blinds, clothes racks, and bath stools—are here subjected to a process of transformation into new dimensions. Escaping their original functions, these objects are recomposed through Yang’s language and brought onto the stage as poetic entities.

Yet they do not simply become “elevated” into artworks. The blinds, one of the most recurrent motifs in Yang’s practice, continue to function as boundaries between inside and outside, while simultaneously embodying semi-transparent thresholds through which light, sound, air, and scent permeate.


Installation view of 《Leap Year》 © Hayward Gallery

In doing so, they become elements and mediators that allow opposing concepts—division and connection, blockage and openness—to coexist. The artist, as an alchemist who penetrates essence, does not merely transform objects but activates the latent possibilities embedded within them. In this regard, 《Haegue Yang: Leap Year》 functions as a provisional constellation drawn within an ever-expanding universe of possibilities. Rather than summarizing past trajectories, it operates as a map toward the near future. One may attempt to read between the lines, but there is no complete narrative or finished journey—at least not within Haegue Yang’s world.

References