Haegue Yang’s exhibition elevates the domestic to new artistic heights

Venetian blinds may not be the most expected medium for artistic expression, but South Korean artist Haegue Yang is known for using domestic objects in unexpected ways. Her latest installation (pictured above), created for ‘Haegue Yang: Leap Year’ – on show at the Hayward Gallery until 5 January – is a fine example.

Named Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun, it features ascending layers of Venetian blinds in varying formations and colours. Partnered with two breathing stage lights and a historic musical score, this work is inspired by Double Concerto (1977), created by the late Korean composer and political dissident Isang Yun (1917 - 1995). Yang has long been drawn to the possibilities presented by the semi-transparency of blinds and their ability to divide space.

Her first use of the window treatment in a gallery setting was her 2006 work Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Version Utrecht, but also notable is Sol LeWitt Upside Down (it took over the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall back in 2023), for which Yang reimagined one of American LeWitt’s artworks from 1986, expanding it using 500 Venetian blinds and flipping it so that it descends from the ceiling.

Venetian blinds may be Yang’s most familiar trope, but it is not the only reference to the domestic in her work. Her breakthrough in fact was Sadong 30 – a project that took over her unoccupied, dilapidated family home outside Seoul for eight years! Yang’s first solo show in her own country, this seminal piece is reimagined for Hayward Gallery’s retrospective.

Often interactive and multi-sensory, her artworks have also involved drying racks, lightbulbs, pom-poms, bells, hand-knitted yarn and hanji (Korean paper). They transform the everyday into something other.

For the artist, the ability to look back on her work to date has been a unique opportunity. ‘For this survey show,’ she explains, ‘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.’ southbankcentre.co.uk