Explore the works of Haegue Yang with Leap Year curator Yung Ma

Hayward Gallery senior curator Yung Ma introduces the exhibition Leap Year which featured 120 works by the Korean artist Haegue Yang.

As Yung Ma explains, Yang is best known for turning mundane everyday objects into amazing artworks. The artist uses these objects to explore topics that are both personal and universal, such as migration, and displacement.

Embodying that combination of the personal, of displacement and everyday objects, was Yang’s 2006 debut exhibition Sadong 30, in which the artist turned the abandoned home of her grandparents in Seoul into an artwork and exhibition space. In Leap Year, Yang revisited that project, attempting to record the memories of it through The Recollection of Sadong 30.

Among the other pieces introduced in this video are Storage Piece (2004) which consists of 27 other works by Haegue Yang packed into a single piece. A solution to her own storage issues at the time and a means of highlighting the struggles of being an artist, Storage Piece was gradually unpacked during the exhibition’s run.

Yung Ma also introduces Intermediate, a series of woven sculptures begun in 2015 which draw on the traditions of basket weaving and combine artificial materials with organic techniques. And we get an insight into Sonic Rope (2021), a chord of metal bells inspired by a Korean fairytale about the origins of the sun and the moon.

This curatorial introduction to Haegue Yang: Leap Year concludes with a look at a new work made specifically for the exhibition. Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) is a Venetian blind installation inspired by the Korean composer and political dissident Isang Yun and his 1977 composition ‘Double Concerto’.