Haegue Yang: Leap Year at the Hayward Gallery

Expect mind-bending instillations and sculptures in this major UK show by South Korean artist Haegue Yang, featuring work from throughout her career. 

The Hayward Gallery, in the Southbank Centre, will present Haegue Yang: Leap Year, the first major UK survey of the internationally celebrated artist, from October 9, to January 5, 2025. 

Transformed domestic items will scatter themselves across the exhibition space, which will also host the world premiere of what is described as a “large-scale Venetian blind installation”.

Although this slightly lackluster title may not pique the interest of some viewers, the Venetian blinds will certainly be more interesting than they sound.

Ms Yang is known for her astounding ability to reconstruct everyday domestic items and industrial objects into distinctive sculptures and multimedia installations – creating enthralling scenes you may not otherwise associate with a drying rack.

Leap Year will also see folk traditions mutated and politics warped into immersive works.

From East Asian traditions and folklore to modernism, contemporary art history and nature, Ms Yang’s works are steeped in layers of references.

Using mulberry paper she explores ancient belief systems and practices to dissect the relationships between matter and spirituality.

In her series of collages, Mesmerizing Mesh, the artwork references sacred and ritualistic paper objects related to shamanism and folk or pagan traditions, while The Intermediates, features hybrid ‘creature-like’ sculptures made from artificial straw that draws from global weaving techniques.

Speaking ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Ms Yang said: “My artworks often have very long names with seemingly odd combinations of words that are hard even for me to memorise, whereas my exhibition titles are much simpler. 

“This naming tradition mirrors my relationship to art-making versus exhibition-making. Art making is like weaving together a piece of complex, and therefore impossible to unweave, fabric, while exhibition making is like tailoring it into something comfortable to wear. Both acts are eager attempts towards perfection. 

“For this survey show, I deliberately unfocused my eyes to obtain the hidden 3D vision of my own practice, which is a rare, perfect occurrence like a leap year.”

Haegue Yang: Leap Year will be on at the Hayward Gallery from October 9, to January 5, 2025.

Pictured top: Installation view, Come Shower or Shine, It Is Equally Blissful, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2015 (Picture: Haegue Yang. Photo: Tang Xuan. Courtesy of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing)