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Haegue Yang
144 Plays12 days ago
Believe it or not, this is the first episode dedicated to an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, a brutalist building Joana and Emily love so much.
And what better way to start than with the immersive experience of Haegue Yang’s solo show? Even the threshold between the hall and the exhibition space is a happening in “Leap Year”, the first survey of the South Korean artist in the UK, open from 9 October 2024 to 5 January 2025.
This episode was recorded during the week, late in the afternoon, rather than in our usual time (the early hours of a quiet Sunday) so it may be infused with a certain chaotic energy. Or was it the sensory fest of Yang’s art? Tune in to decide for yourself.
To know more about the exhibition: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/haegue-yang-leap-year/
Follow Haegue yang on Instagram: @yanghaegue
To see images of the exhibition go to our Instagram account: @exhibitionistas_podcast
If you want to support us, go to: https://www.patreon.com/c/exhibitionistaspodcast/membership
Music by Sarturn.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode and Haegui Young's Exhibition
00:00:09
Speaker
Hi there, Joanna here. Thank you for joining us for another exhibitionist's episode dedicated to Lee Pye, a survey of the South Korean artist Haegui Young at the Hayward Gallery. Emily and I recorded this episode for the first and probably the last time during the week and the late afternoon, rather than in the early hours of a Sunday, and there is a certain chaotic energy to it as Emily and I are mourning people.
00:00:39
Speaker
I don't know if you'll notice it, but it is the first episode where I lost it and laughed for what felt like a very long time. Because it was me, who breached exhibition etiquette this time.
Supporting the Podcast's Growth
00:00:51
Speaker
And as Emily rightly pointed out, I was the one who dedicated a whole episode last season to this very subject. So now, my usual reminder for you to feel the holiday spirit and subscribe to our Patreon page for less than a latte or a pint.
00:01:10
Speaker
Supporting Us is also supporting those who cannot pay but still want to enjoy the podcast without ads. It makes a huge difference for us because we're an independent podcast, unlike most of the ones you listen to, which are part of media platforms. Your help allows us to grow and to produce even better episodes for you. The link to the page is, as always, in the show's notes.
00:01:36
Speaker
So, go ahead and be Christmassy. We're Hanaki. And now, let's move on to the episode.
Impact and Personal Reactions to Haegui Young's Show
00:01:50
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Exhibitionistas. This is the podcast where we go to exhibitions so that you have to. My name is Emily Harding. I'm an art lover and an exhibition goer. I'm so glad you could join us for this episode about Hagga Yang. She currently has a show called Leap Year taking place at the Hayward Gallery in London until the 5th of January, 2025.
00:02:14
Speaker
So, I am not going to bury the lead here and just say, go see it. And if you can't be in London to see this show, check out her work any way that you can. You will not regret it. I mean, I was just so blown away. I mean, I can't say that this exhibition like changed my life, but by the end, I felt like I had traversed.
00:02:40
Speaker
like my own interior and ah that I traveled to South Korea. so and and And Ben on many travels with her, quite frankly. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to let my lovely co-host introduce herself. Well, hello, hello, exhibitionistas. I am Joanna Pianneves, independent writer and curator, artistic director of Drawing Now Paris.
00:03:05
Speaker
And I'm so glad that you are this enthusiastic, Emily, because last time I i almost thought that we'd lost you. So welcome back. Yeah, it's true. I am more enthusiastic about this than I was a previous ah exhibition we visited. I think we're going to lose a few friends with the previous episode. So this is the first time we are covering an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, if you can believe it.
00:03:34
Speaker
I remember that almost a year ago, I was so happy to visit their show of Hiroshi Sugimoto's work, um Japanese Conceptual Photographer. And now we are going to South Korea and Germany with the amazing Haegui Young.
Cultural Reflections and Societal Implications
00:03:49
Speaker
But first, as ever, what other cultural things have you been delving into, Emily, this week? How has your week been?
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, it hasn't been as joyous as visiting the Haguyang exhibition, I gotta say, given the US election results and doing lots of digesting and and thinking about that and all of the developments that are taking place. So we're recording this a couple weeks after the election results were announced. but So I've been doing a lot of thinking, along with loads of other people, of course, about you know what this kind of means. and
00:04:29
Speaker
It brought me back to ah the work of Robert Putnam, who some people might have heard of the work Bowling Alone. He's a Harvard professor and he wrote a paper originally in the late 90s that looked at this whole notion of social capital and the fact that the US was losing it. President Clinton at the time was a big fan of his and he turned that paper into a book called Bowling Alone, which is essentially what you imagine it to be. It's like Americans are not joining bowling leagues any anymore, they're just doing it on their own. And that goes for all sorts of civic institutions, labor unions, et cetera, civic groups, you know obviously religious institutions that people were no longer joining into, you know living more atomized lives.
00:05:18
Speaker
that book Bowling Alone is basically looking at the mid-60s to the late 90s where social capital went down. When I was working at the US Congress, this was like required reading in the office that I worked in. It was like, you don't say really. Yeah. Yeah. It's really fascinating. I mean, if anybody, this is not a, this is not a politics. It's not a plug.
00:05:44
Speaker
know it yeah for for political books. But why not? Why not? Yeah. So he his research is that now looking at um how did we build all that social capital in the first place? So at the end of the 1800s in the US and lots of places, we had the Gilded Age. So we had very, very rich people and very, very poor people.
00:06:08
Speaker
And that is happening again now, that huge gulf between what you know people like Elon Musk make and you know regular folks has only exacerbated massively. So he's saying, well, if we're in that same position, what can we learn about how we got ourselves out of that gilded age and and is it possible to do it again? So that's helping me feel a little bit more hopeful about the world, at least.
00:06:37
Speaker
And could art perhaps bridge that gap? You know what? It could. I mean, honestly, it's like I think the notion of going and seeing exhibitions together, seeing art together, talking about it together. I mean, obviously podcasts are part of that atomized culture, right? I mean, people listen to them on their own, usually, you know, on a run or doing the dishes or what have you. But art,
00:07:06
Speaker
in and of itself in the institution of absolutely can play a part in bringing people together. Listen, he is wishing that um art will still play a part in American society from January on. And um speaking of bridging the gap, so this is the week where Mauricio Catalan's banana was sold For about six million or six and a half million dollars. Our newspaper had something on that, didn't they? So and our our colleague, Ben Luke, just posted on this Instagram an article he wrote five years ago, I think, or a few years ago about the the the famous banana. So to explain, the piece in itself is a banana, a real banana, taped onto the wall with s scotch tape.
00:08:03
Speaker
but not scotch tape, with duct tape. And it's called Comedian. ok It's a fun pun, obviously, because I had forgotten the title. And because it kind of came back, um I was thinking, huh, that's not a bad title, actually. It kind of almost elevates such a silly joke, basically.
00:08:24
Speaker
um And so the person who bought this work is a Chinese crypto bro, as Ben Luke puts it. I may be misquoting him, but I remember the word bro. um And he he's very happy to to buy it. He's going to eat the banana as soon as he installs it or gets it. It's obviously what you get when you buy this.
00:08:50
Speaker
is a certificate, and we talked about this in the last episode, so any any work that um has ephemeral elements into it, obviously yeah you have to remake it all the time. There is a piece by Giovanni Anselmo, if I'm not mistaken, in the Pompidou Collection that is a sort of a, like a funereal plinth almost in marble,
00:09:16
Speaker
with a lettuce on top of it. So obviously the lettuce needs to be replaced all the time. It's not such a wild thing you know in the outworld. And as far as materials go, it has been done and redone. It's not something new. But the fact that it is just a banana and it's duct tape and it's such a speculative operation by this point, you know this this comedian piece, yeah um brings the art world again into the general press, which is not great because that's the point where whatever you think of Maurizio Catalan, that's where we lose people. Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
Contemporary Art Critiques and Discussions
00:10:06
Speaker
That's what people take from contemporary art. you know So I was reading in this blog, this kind of feminist gossip blog, the banana got to it. It has nothing about feminism, nothing about anything. It has no relation whatsoever to the premise of the website. And the person was writing, and believe it or not, what you buy when you buy the banana is a piece of paper and a certificate.
00:10:36
Speaker
And it's, you know, for for us in the art world is so normal. It's such a normal thing almost, not for everyone, but maybe in the contemporary art world. And so I think that's the point where things are not, you know, they're not bridged. That's where we lose a lot of people.
00:10:54
Speaker
um And then they can sort of cast it as silly and extreme and, you know, I mean, people are spending all of this money on on that. And yeah, exactly. I mean, I feel like this show that we're going to talk about, though, is the embodiment of like what contemporary art can do and really relate to people, because I felt like I related to it.
00:11:20
Speaker
so Yes, I'm so curious to hear about that, Emily, because, you know, I've been looking at the reviews of the show, Time Out, The Guardian, really bad reviews. Really? Yeah, two stars, one star. Yeah, I'm i'm quite surprised and I can't put my finger on it. um Wow, that's so interesting because, I mean, you know, my husband Peter, he He enjoys art, and but he's definitely not going with me to every single one. But this was one that even before I said we were going to go talk about this, he was like, I want to go to that one.
00:11:54
Speaker
you know he just he was really drawn to it. Do you want to talk, you know, just
Haegui Young's Background and Artistic Themes
00:12:00
Speaker
contextualize the artist a little bit, Hagemia Young, um for our listeners? Sure, sure. So I'll preface this by saying there isn't a ton out there sort of about her upbringing and other than the bits you find and the the the catalog and other gallery profiles, etc. But there's lots of interviews with her and they are well worth it where she sort of talks about her work.
00:12:25
Speaker
quite exclusively. but what we do know i mean So she was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1971. She grew up with parents that were both writers and labor activists. ah Korea at the time was ruled by a military dictator, Park Chung-hee, that took power in 1961, so 10 years before she was born and was assassinated in 1979.
00:12:49
Speaker
Her father was dismissed from his job as a journalist along with hundreds of others for protesting censorship under the dictator. And he ended up in construction and one of the he he ended up working in North Africa. I think it was Libya.
00:13:07
Speaker
and maybe Tunisia, but he ended up working in North Africa, which a lot of folks from Asian backgrounds did at the time, mostly in the Gulf. The Gulf was certainly you know kind of going through a big boom time and I mean, there were millions of of South Koreans in particular, but folks from across Southeast Asia that were there working on construction sites, etc., during that whole construction boom kind of in the 90s, I guess.
00:13:40
Speaker
So, um but these themes of her parents, yeah of political movement, you know, through their union work, etc., and displacement are ah alive and well in her work and really, really palpable. She produced a commission that honored Korean migrants to the Gulf in 2015. That was called Opaque Wind, and it had sort of an external installation and an internal installation.
00:14:10
Speaker
So this means that if you're saying the 90s, so that means that she grew up in North Africa because she was born in 1971. They didn't live there. He went to work there. Oh, so he left and so and her mom and her stayed behind in Korea. That's my understanding. I mean, that was the general thing that happened because often with those arrangements, they don't allow your family to come with you. You were there to work and that's it. Your visa. That's brutal. Okay.
00:14:44
Speaker
ah Really brutal. I mean, you know indentured servitude is a way to describe it, which is a way to describe slavery. And I don't know what particular conditions her father was under, but I mean, you go to Dubai and all of these kind of, you know, Kuwait or wherever. And that is the pretty appalling situation that a lot of these folks are in. When I was working in Iraq, there were a lot of people who were working within the green zone that had pretty appalling conditions. I mean, but yeah, so I doubt that their um their families would have been able to join them.
00:15:22
Speaker
Wow, that is brutal. ah okay yeah That's a wild experience. okay They stayed and the dad left, which may have triggered her imagination of whatever is beyond and what it is to work.
00:15:39
Speaker
outside because she ended up in Germany, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So she she got her BFA from Seoul National University and graduated with her master's from Stratuschule, I think is how it's pronounced to in Germany. Of course, absolutely. Perfect German, Emily. Honestly, low notes. I went in with confidence. Confidence. Yeah, exactly. So she's a professor at that university now. and So is it strange to you, knowing the art world and artists much better, that she is a is a university professor?
Artists Balancing Teaching and Art Careers
00:16:15
Speaker
I mean, is that ah is that a common thing? um yes Oh, yes. Yes, of course. at The Beaux-Arts even in Paris, so the fine arts school, like the very famous fine arts school in Paris, there are even teachers or these professors, they have studios. So you're studying under
00:16:34
Speaker
The Annette Messager Studio, for example, or in the Annette Messager Studio, and Annette Messager is a huge artist. So there is this kind of tradition. I guess it seems like a sort of, now that I'm thinking about it, it almost feels like a remnant from the olden days. Yeah. When you had the master and the disciple and you had Michelangelo and then you had all the other ones who also kind of contributed to whatever frescoes they were doing, but it was Michelangelo's.
00:17:02
Speaker
So, of course, there's a bit of that, but then you're studying to yourself, become an artist and leave the school and then have your own autonomous career, obviously, but it's not that, it's not that unusual. In fact, it's very, very normal that at a certain point, artists are either invited to to teach or they want to teach themselves to preserve a certain freedom, to have a steady income yeah and what what best thing to do than to remain in the school and and kind of be within that system in a way you know yeah because i mean you know philip gustin obviously when we talked about him he was he was teaching as well and uh you know you think of like the bow house school it's like all of the incredible you know artists that were there that were teaching at the time
00:17:54
Speaker
But I guess, you know, that I sort of categorize that as something historical that artists did, because i'm I'm in the Hayward Gallery and I'm looking at the immense body of work and this huge solo show. And there's part of me that thinks, well, she must be doing pretty well. yeah I mean, like, like, like, I mean, there's, you know, there's no way she would need to have ah steady income outside of what she is doing
00:18:25
Speaker
but do you i mean do you think that and And maybe she loves teaching, you know, maybe she loves it and that's a different thing, you know, but it's like, if it's the argument of a steady income, is it conceivable that somebody could be of her stature and still in the art world not have like steady enough or enough income to survive? Is that, would you say that's true? That's a very, very good question, actually. And I don't think people realize how precarious sometimes
00:18:56
Speaker
being an artist is somehow because in her case I don't know much about her gallery exhibitions. She is represented by a very good gallery, Chantal Crouselle in Paris. And this is an international gallery of great status. But I've never seen an exhibition there, you know like these more commercial, let's say, um exhibitions that artists produce for galleries. um But looking at her work, think about it, Emily.
Art in Large Collections and Institutions
00:19:26
Speaker
Even if you live in a palace,
00:19:30
Speaker
how much of those works could you, I mean, how much could she sell, that's true you know, in terms of dimension, in terms of, there's a thing, a phenomenon, which is that there's int there's institutional artists. So artists who really are interested in producing these incredibly poetic, risque, almost experimental kinds of works,
00:19:58
Speaker
that are not fit for other places than big collections such as Pinot that we talked about in regards to Mike Kelly or big institutional collections such as the Tate, for example. yeah The Tate has a huge collection. So there's this phenomenon of artists, of course you are very well paid to do an exhibition like this, or you should. um She ah moves around the world and she does another thing, which is another phenomenon for artists. It's another source of income, which is doing residencies. So there's this, um if you're not a TAT, if you don't have children,
00:20:41
Speaker
And or if your children are older or if you don't have yet children, there's another way for you to create and to find ways to produce and to exist, which is doing residencies. And that's one of the things she did. And that's one of the things that actually created one of the works in the exhibition called Storage Piece. She was moving about. And at a certain point, she didn't even have a place to live, let alone a place to store her work.
00:21:10
Speaker
And therefore, she had a huge problem in her hands because she had a burgeoning career, not a lot of money, but a lot of invitations to be part of exhibitions across Europe. yeah So she produced a lot of work. And when it came back to her, where does she put it?
Integration of Life Experiences into Art
00:21:27
Speaker
so you know that's And I think you're asking yourself these questions because this exhibition is so clever.
00:21:34
Speaker
that it talks about how she incorporates what it is to be a creative person in the world with objects, right? I mean, we're going to talk about it, but I think that planted these questions in your mind. And I i applaud her for that. That's incredible. And I applaud you as well, because not everyone thinks about these things. I am being so professional. What is wrong with me? Sorry, why am I applauding you?
00:22:03
Speaker
help. But she she was pretty successful from the jump. I mean, she graduated in 1999 and had a first solo exhibition in 2000 in Barbara Vines Gallery in Berlin. So I mean, and I can imagine that was a cracking show. Like I tried to find some stuff on it. I couldn't but I i love your passion.
00:22:28
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I mean, she yeah, she's really got to me this one. But I mean, and I also, I'll just say so she primarily works in sculpture, prints, collage installation.
00:22:42
Speaker
You know, it's kind of an overview and they include ideas of myths and legends that she grew up with every day ah growing up and then articles like very domestic articles as well. So drying racks, light bulbs, radiators, other appliances. Venetian blinds are a big one.
00:23:01
Speaker
ah which I thought she used to chef's kiss, a beautiful execution there. um but And and and her her works are really sensory. So movement is a big thing and the sculptures and installations move, but there's light and sound involved where you just feel like you're moving within it.
00:23:26
Speaker
And movement is such a big thing
Appreciating Sensory Aspects of Art
00:23:28
Speaker
for her. you know Obviously, we talked about political movements, the movement of your person from you know being geographically unbound. I mean, her father was, she is. That's a big part of a but of her story. But also just like physical movement. So the very, very tactile things she has that that my hands wanted to touch so badly and move. you know I mean, she she works with bells a lot. and i mean some I was hoping there was a security she in this episode as well with you, Emily. I'm shocked. It might have happened with me. Oh, and late teaser, tea teaser.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. Um, but yeah, so that's kind of the the broad ah The broad picture of of kind of how she works and this exhibition in and of itself is called This is another sort of curator question for you. It's called um It is called a survey rather than a retrospective. Is there a difference? Yes, so that's a bit of a conundrum because it's almost means the same thing I was gonna say it sounds like a distinction without a difference but Well, there is a difference based upon age, which means that, and that's a funny thing with her because in the beginning ah of her career, she made two things, two catalog resumes when she'd only had like five years of existence, probably including her student years.
00:25:07
Speaker
And she says in an interview, I was quite aware of the fact that a catalog resume was everything you produced. And I just found the idea really compelling to really look at everything I had made. And you feel that she has that kind of mind that she wants to really focus on everything she produces because her dates, the dates of some of her works are like 2001, 2021, for example.
Exhibition Types and Gallery Architecture
00:25:35
Speaker
And she goes back to some series And so it's really interesting because the catalog resume would go with the retrospective exhibition or even a posthumous exhibition. So a retrospective exhibition is like, you will have had produced so much work. You're revered. You probably have some lots of prizes, lots of accolades. And now we're going to go through all your work and all the phases of your work in your life. And so certain artists,
00:26:04
Speaker
even when they are of a certain age say, I will not say who told me that, they're like, no, no, no, I don't want to do a retrospective, you know, like, come on, I'm not old. And some artists are really happy to get to that point, like, okay, I'm going to work on a retrospective. um A survey is more what she likes to do. I think she really defines even her process, which is to go over her production, go over what she's done and organize it in a way by themes chronologically, you know however you want to do it. And it's kind of overlooking a body of work that doesn't have to comprise the whole, each element of the of of the whole career, let's say. Right. Okay. And this that's true for this one. I mean, this one is definitely thematic and does not go chronologically. And, you know, looking through some of her other work, there's clearly a lot that was
00:27:00
Speaker
not included in this um necessarily but cool so do you want to like bring us into the exhibition? Sure I just want to add that she so in terms of her life she was very European at a certain point so she moved to Germany she studied in Germany she did lots of residencies all over ah around the world she spent some time in Paris um And then in 2015, she had a big exhibition in Seoul in Liam Museum. um And so she ah spent some time in Korea and kind of went back to Korea, bought a studio that rented a studio there. um And so established herself from there on between South Korea
00:27:52
Speaker
and Germany. So there was a process in her life, as far as I understand, where she left, she moved out, she became very European, she de-orientalised herself, as she puts it in in in an interview or her work.
00:28:09
Speaker
um absorbed a lot of things um she's very curious she's very interested in practices across the world she does lots of investigations and then going back to south korea brought back an interest in certain practices and the politics of those practices that we're going to talk about later because it does come up in the exhibition so i think that's an important thing to say yeah yeah so exhibition. So the Hayward Gallery is a brutalist building within the
00:28:50
Speaker
Southbank, I forget. so Yeah, the Southbank kind of complex. There's a whole bunch there. yeah So it's a beautiful ah complex and a beautiful gallery by the River Thames. ah Brutalist architecture, cement, grey, but of a certain period so it's not ah a sort of rectangular thing and just a huge gallery. There's these kind of and these nooks and these spaces and it's a really interesting building and
00:29:25
Speaker
It's interesting as well because you open a door so you don't, it's not like a debate where everything's open and you just go through an entrance that has no door that opens or closes. And so here, and this is to tell you how she thinks of space as well. It's really interesting what she does. So when you're, The thing is, when you're going to see an exhibition, or maybe it's just me because I'm an excited little bunny, but you kind of like go into the space and you don't think about it. You just want to see, want to be inside. yeah But she marks the thresholds. So there's someone at the door who tells you, as you are about to open the door, well, you can go in. So go in. But there's an artwork that you can touch. So it's not this one, it's that one.
00:30:15
Speaker
And of course, I go into a complete panic. Because if you give me instructions, I'm super focused. ah i Hold on, let me write that down. What was that? OK. Or I can touch something. So I go like, I'm going to get this wrong. you know And they this kind of like feeling of doom, that this is not going to work. So you go and as you went. So not only do you have that experience, but as you went, there there's a curtain.
00:30:44
Speaker
of little um ropes made by bells, by these circular bells that jingle jingle yeah jingle bells yeah kind of jingle bells that produced that jingling sound as you went to the exhibition. So you're not in the exhibition and already it's quite the experience yeah um and you renounce your arrival and you feel that you're passing a threshold of some kind and then ah There's a huge ins installation of- Sorry. Sorry. Just to say that I did not get any warning. um No one told me anything when im joking so I Was I being pranked? I went in, I opened the doors and I saw that you know the the curtain of bells in front of me and I just went to the side and walked around it.
00:31:34
Speaker
like I was like oh I'm not obviously I'm not supposed to yeah exactly I know i've I've had this experience before I don't want to leave in handcuffs okay I know this yeah I've been scolded before someone went through my phone and my pictures before I'm not gonna go through this again exactly so so I went around it and it wasn't until And I just didn't even really consider it at all. And it wasn't until I sort of got to the other side of the room and then I heard somebody else come in. It was like, jingle, jingle, jingle. And I was like, no way. I missed that. So when I go back with Peter, I'm not going to tell him anything. And I want him to just walk ahead of me and live it literally. So not really puzzled, because I presumed that.
00:32:24
Speaker
so e So you enter, so let me not get ahead of myself here. So you enter and there's this beautiful installation with with drying racks, these white, weird, almost anthropomorphic shapes.
00:32:39
Speaker
And these but these cables that have these lamps, these lit lamps at the end, so these electric cables that go up to the ceiling, go into the drying racks, go ah up to the ceiling again, then go into the drying racks. There's ah white cables, black cables, and there's lights, you know, light bulbs everywhere. And this is really beautiful thing. And so I spent about five minutes caressing the cables.
00:33:09
Speaker
Amazing. I'm sorry Heywood Gallery if you're listening. Amazing. I had no idea that they were talking about the curtain because for me... Oh, wow. So you thought that was the bit you could touch with the cables. Yes. And I'm still not sure. Do you think? Because listen, listen, can you reason with me? So you have a curtain. So because now you're throwing me off. Because you have a curtain.
00:33:39
Speaker
How can you go through a curtain without touching it? That's what I told you. So there's a gap between the curtain and the wall. I didn't see it. I was so nervous. And I was just like, oh, well, clearly I'm not touching. I'm not supposed to touch anything. I've been told before.
00:34:00
Speaker
Hands off! Yeah, shimmy to the side, get out the gaps. I was like, went through the curtains and touched all the cables.
00:34:13
Speaker
And you know, like, oh my gosh. That's amazing. And nobody was there, like, shaking a finger at you? One. And I saw people looking. Was it busy when you were there? Was it, like,
00:34:30
Speaker
I saw people looking at me it like, is she doing? Girl, get a grip. Pull yourself together. It's an electrical cord. And also this is an art exhibition where people don't know how to behave
00:34:53
Speaker
Oh my God. And this is the woman who did an episode on exhibition etiquette. There we have it. Oh Oh, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. It did make me follow the cables. It was a completely sensorial experience because I just followed the cables up and then was like, oh.
00:35:15
Speaker
So this one goes there. I'm going to touch that one." And then there was a point that was like, why? This doesn't add anything to the experience. you know Wow. You were like, yeah, i'm I'm into it, but I'm not really sure what the... Can you imagine if like, cause those drying racks, these are like the kind of drying racks you buy at IKEA or whatever.
00:35:38
Speaker
and there's like one stacked on top of another and then those chords are kind of going through it so that the lights can yeah be in there. So my realization was I hear the jingling sound and I turn around and I see a child playing with the the jingle bells, the curtain, yeah and a security looking at the child like really and I just think okay so maybe they thought I worked at the Hayward because ah not to bury the lead again. Later on, it there's a there's this sort of text on the wall telling you that you can ask someone from the staff to activate sculptures for you. So the sculptures are supposed to be that some of them are supposed to be touched. And I think they probably thought the security guard probably thought, oh, this is a curator I didn't know. and Or this is a technician that's kind of kind of checking if everything's fine. Or
00:36:34
Speaker
I just know that I shouldn't be saying this recorded.
Interactive Elements in Haegui Young's Sculptures
00:36:41
Speaker
Because you probably went up there with like absolute confidence, you know? Like you pronounced Straderschule. Yeah. Exactly the same way. Same confidence. Who knows if it's right, but you know what? I'm doing it. I'm touching this stuff. But there's, there's,
00:36:57
Speaker
Also in the exhibition, one of the ones in that room that you can activate or have the staff activate is the, there's a giant jingle bell rope ah ah that kind of goes, it's it's pretty substantial. It goes all the way to the top, really high ceiling, kind of has a a, you know, kind of a lagging connecting bit and then it goes down. There's a shorter side that hangs down. And so it's it's a rope, it's to mimic a rope, which is ah a bit of folklore about a couple of kids that were running from a tiger. She had a brother and a sister, I think. Exactly. And they asked for a rope to come down that they could climb to save them. And they climbed the rope. And when they got up to the heavens or whatever, the girl became the sun and the boy became the moon. And that's sort of the origin story in Korean folklore of the sun and the moon.
00:37:54
Speaker
But there's that sign there that says that you can activate that. I didn't see the sign, but I saw a guy go over there and like start spinning that rope. And i you know again, it's like I've learned my lesson, right? I had taken the message on board to follow the rules at exhibitions. and um And I was kind of looking at him and I was like, is there a badge there? Is he official? you know So I was kind of looking at it. And he was, he was in fact official. And then he very kindly one of the sculptures be activated because that's one of the things. So regularly, people go there, people from the Hayward Gallery obviously and activate the sculpture. So you very regularly have sound immediately. Well, that that that room is full of sound because people, I mean, Hayward Gallery is always busy, so there's always people going in. And then that rope is activated again. So quite an eventful start to the exhibition, basically. And then
00:38:53
Speaker
but you have um two works that are quite interesting, which, and there are um kind of works from the beginning, I think 2008, around that time. So one of them is, and I keep forgetting the name of that work. So I'm going to see in the catalog, social conditions of the sitting table, which is from 2001. And it's a photographic piece and with a little text, so quite conceptual.
00:39:22
Speaker
So really a work from the beginning where she had a more social and political stance, let's say. And there are photographs of sitting tables, which is apparently a South Korean or maybe a whole ah Korean phenomenon of making these makeshift kind of tables that are made with found materials, I think. yeah And they're supposed to be in front of shops.
00:39:53
Speaker
um And they are used for everything. Basically, you can lean onto them, you can put things on them. And I didn't understand the purpose of those tables. I just understood that they are a dying tradition and she kind of wanted to um document it yeah because it's disappearing and it's a very moving object.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I loved it, though. I mean, I love I love the whole simple notion of let's just create this table that people can kind of do what they need to do. And I mean, going back to where we opened up with this book I'm reading on social capital and ah Robert Putnam's work, it's like that's how that
Korean Cultural Influences in Art
00:40:35
Speaker
little things like that help engineer community that is more connected. And I i yeah, I loved those.
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah, I love that piece as well, because it is also a piece, and that's why I say that I didn't quite understand the purpose of it, because it's one of those idiosyncrasies, right? It's one of those those things that probably for Koreans are like, sure, the sitting table, obviously. And for us, like, but What is it? But wait, so you put stuff on it, but then you sit on it. Why is it called sitting table? Because you don't use tables. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it also shows the difference in body behavior. And then I did some research and there's something called it's not a sitting table, but there's these exterior tables that are quite wide.
00:41:29
Speaker
And they're used in Korea for people to lie down in the garden, to sit, to have a picnic. They're even in gardens. So a whole different use of tables. And I thought they were so clever to put that in there because, okay, the jingle bells, um it is a reference to a sound that is used in rituals in in the whole of Asia, really, not really only in Korea.
00:41:54
Speaker
You may see it or not, you know you may kind of get the the gist of it, but then you get a very specific reference whereby you are in touch with a culture that is uber-specific. then that's and's there's There's a super specificity of this piece that I really loved. I thought it was so clever.
00:42:13
Speaker
And then on the side of it, you have a work called Deux, which means outside. She probably did it when she was doing her residency in Paris. It's a slide piece, so it's a a slide projector projecting these old drawings. um And I noticed that each one of them, each page, so they're kind of scanned or photographed. yeah um And each page has um has these ah parts that are marked or hidden with a marker, a black marker. And it's all the same kind of color, a bit yellowish drawings or prints of these or and urban organization of space. So this modernist idea of the city, this utopian idea of what it is a city by the seaside, what it is um a leisure space in the city, what it is high rises, how are they together in the city, how are they placed?
00:43:13
Speaker
along the streets, how are the streets organized, it's a very kind of, and I like the yellow part of it, it's a bit melancholy, and you see side by side these two aspects that you're going to traverse the whole show, um even though she let go of the more social thing, she's more interested in biography, but she she lets go of that kind of social and almost anthropological aspects to the image of the image. And she goes on to materials. But it's really interesting to see that she's really looking at the effects that modernism had on cultures that weren't um the breeding grounds of of their shapes and those ideals and those utopias. um So that was interesting. And then there's a big installation of abstract
00:44:04
Speaker
drawings made with sanding paper, these cones that end with kind of these circular shapes and on tracing paper yeah um that she either purchased or she made. She had she had she produced herself, she designed herself that have kind of these squares coming out, so they're no longer really... It's not tracing paper, sorry, it's millimetric paper, you call it. That paper that has kind of the lines, the grids, marks for architecture and and technical drawing. um And then you have a ah photograph
00:44:42
Speaker
um printed and and on the wall that defects.
Abstract Art and Historical Engagement
00:44:48
Speaker
It's huge, it's black and white and it makes a sort of garden exterior um and those kind of very abstract shapes are on top of it. um And so that's the very eventful entrance of the exhibition. Yeah. And that, so in that first room, you know, I so i talked to the docent that was doing the um twirling. The shaking of the rope. Yeah, exactly. And then he told me the whole, um
00:45:16
Speaker
the whole folklore story about the kids. And then and then I was chatting with another another guy who worked at the gallery and he was telling me about the Venkoch exhibition that like really As a National Gallery? That's it, yeah. and And he was saying how much he loved it and dah, dah, dah. And there was part of me that was like, he's waxing really lyrical about you know grandmasters. you know I wonder what he thinks of the show. And then he started just effecively talking about the Haggyang show. and And he was like, oh, and there she is. She just walked through.
00:45:56
Speaker
She just got through the exhibition. I was like, I know, I know. I was like, wow. So she's here, which I find very exciting and distracting at the same time, you know, because it's like the only person this shouldn't happen to because you get distracted by the presence of the artist. Totally, totally. And then I'm like, oh, wow, is that, you know,
00:46:18
Speaker
But she she literally just walked like through the through the floor, you know across the floor, and then went down to the lower ground floor. Because, and we'll get to this, she has a bit of the exhibition that she puts up week by week. So every Tuesday, she'll she goes in and and decides how to how to change the exhibition, which also makes it feel very alive. Just a note to say that drip drop, blob, dance, trustworthy,
00:46:48
Speaker
number 2028 is the title of these abstract drawings that I'm trying to describe. yeah And they're from 2013. And then the picture in the background is called Poetics of Displacement. And it's from 2011. So there's really, I mean, she really drops a few hints, even this idea of abstraction. And if you buy the catalogue, there's one of the very few really the interesting texts that I've read, I haven't finished yet, about abstraction. Really interesting. And what it is that an artist like her pi taken from is taking from ah the history of abstraction and what that history is besides the European history. Yeah, it's really interesting. So then you go to the second level of the exhibition that you can kind of see from that ground level. She, again,
00:47:47
Speaker
um included the staff of the institution to decide on what color that whole room would be painted in. Oh, really? I missed that. Yeah, there's a little label that says that that color was chosen by the team that was working with her. I love that. And they chose an almost Yvesclin blue because Yvesclin, the artist,
00:48:18
Speaker
invented a blue. I think even patant patented it. it I'm not sure about what I'm saying, but I mean it it's his blue, so it's known as the Eveclan blue.
00:48:30
Speaker
And that blue is very close to it. So he produced many paintings in that blue and um sculptures, objects, et cetera, Yvesclin, I mean. So that's the, and it's, the Yvesclin blue is radiating. It radiates. ah very It's very peculiar color because it's very dense. And at the same time, it has a for ah form of,
00:48:56
Speaker
it it has some light at the same time. It's deep and light. um So it's a very strong room with these incredible sculptures and these lines stenciled on
Incorporating Political and Personal Narratives
00:49:10
Speaker
the ground. So there's this whole activity, this whole movement on the ground that are seemingly, I presume, notations for the movement of the sculptures because all the sculptures move. yeah And then there's another work on the wall that is text like pages of books onto these rather unremarkable circles.
00:49:40
Speaker
or shapes, they're not quite circular, but they become circular because you can activate them or you can make them rotate really quickly until they form a perfect circle. And the pages, the the book pages are about activists, writers, creative people who are politically active. So there's a reference to Ghassan Kanafani, I think, a Palestinian writer and activist. um There's references to many, you know, to to to very different people from all over the world. And I kind of sensed it might have been a reference to her mom as well. I mean, she always has this idea, and she talks about it in an interview, that
00:50:30
Speaker
For her, it was kind of a territory where she couldn't go because her family were political, they were activists, and she's an artist. So how do you articulate these spaces of action? That room feels alive. You are there in the midst of all of it. I mean, you cannot help but be a part of what is happening in that room because of because you're yeah you're literally in the middle of it. So all of these sculptures or what there's one hanging from the ceiling that has the Venetian blinds, but the rest of them are all on caster wheels, so you can see that they move.
00:51:16
Speaker
And they look like friendly objects. They look like structures you might want to jump into. Oh, they're stacked corners, ventilating orange and blue square, which is really beautiful. So this is the first time we encounter works made with Venetian blinds. So Venetian blinds really are a staple of her creation. She really uses them repeatedly. So there's that one.
00:51:43
Speaker
There's reflected red blue cubist dancing mask, which is supposed to hide your whole body. And to kind of have these shapes a little bit like an African mask because modernism was so inspired by African masks. And you're supposed to make it swirl and hide behind it. But it's like this deep blue. Then there's these red. It looks like the game Tangram. I don't know if I think we are the only family who has that game. It's like these geometric
00:52:15
Speaker
um pieces and you have a card with a shape and you have to recreate the shape with like a triangle, a square, you know these different pieces. And it's sometimes quite hard. You can spend like 35 minutes on it. And it made me think of that and they can become shapes like almost anthropomorphic or boats or objects or animals. It's um it's quite Asian actually, I think it's probably an Asian game. And this piece kind of made me think of that. um There's the ranting intermediates. So some of them are part of the group of works that she calls the intermediates.
00:52:53
Speaker
Right? yeah um So do you want to explain what those are? They're very colorful. They're very tactile. They have kind of knobs and sort of ribbons coming out of them. And when I was there, there was almost a pair of women that were getting very close to touching them because you almost can't help yourself.
00:53:13
Speaker
And the docent was over very quickly to say, no, I'm sorry, you can't you can't touch these. you know they They do have the um the the gallery staff come in and operate them and kind of you know move them around from time to time. That didn't happen while I was there.
00:53:31
Speaker
But the the experience of being in the middle of that, because there's the objects that move. There are these friendly aliens. There's this African, you know, kind of mask-ish sculpture you you talked about. And then there's the ones that you could get in, like with the Venetian blinds. And then there's another big structure with the jingle bells and the Venetian blinds. that that someone actually does get in the middle of to operate. And it felt like that feeling of being in a kid being a kid and getting a big box and playing house. you know like yeah It's really small, but I want to be in there and feel what it feels like to be in there. And things will change. I will feel differently in that space.
00:54:18
Speaker
And that's what it felt like looking at those but then being in the center of it because the the the the other thing that these sculptures do is play with light and there's light you know, around and the shadows that they cast are remarkable and they're casting those shadows on a floor that have these sketches that you described on them. So it is just a swirling, a feeling of being in in something that is alive because they can all move and you know they can all move. And in the back of your mind, you're kind of half waiting for them to do so and half waiting for your own hands
00:55:03
Speaker
to just nudge them. I could empathize with those two ladies so much. So these intermediates are parts of, um and that's why it's very hard to describe them, because they are parts of a project. So from the moment where in 2015 she went to Seoul and she had that big exhibition at the Liam Museum,
00:55:28
Speaker
um She started working with ah basket weaving with lots lots of traditional crafts that are not, so the the the status of those crafts is not the same as in Europe or let's say in the Occidental world um or at least in the system of the arts in Europe and America and you know and the other countries touched by that our notion here of the arts and the arts hierarchies. So for us crafts, unfortunately, always comes kind of at the bottom, the kind of lesser arts. In Korea, not so much. So it's complex. There's a big museum of crafts. there's It's taken seriously. It's collected. It's revered. um So much so that when she tried to learn, no one wanted to teach her, like they didn't understand what she was doing.
00:56:23
Speaker
And she finally found a kind-hearted, open-minded person who taught her and who was willing to help her and so started this project. And it's hard to describe because it's kind of like baskets gone gone crazy, like yeah suddenly rather than have been open and carrying stuff, they kind of close up, then they have these beautiful Dei Gradei colors blues and yellows, oranges and reds. Then there's stuff coming off of them and then suddenly they look like sea animals, sea creatures. There's another creature that makes me think a bit of a pinata um with these cones coming off of it and these really beautiful colors.
00:57:06
Speaker
that just really work well together somehow you know it's kind of like lime green and red and this kind of ah mid intensity blue and it's complex and then they have handles And that's really interesting because there's this haptic quality to the work and it's true that I maybe am way too well behaved or perhaps traumatized by being pranked by a security guard as I entered. And for me was out of the question. Like I was not touching anything else in this exhibition.
00:57:41
Speaker
um and And I was not lucky, like no one activated anything while while I was there. And I was really taken by the whole room. And there's another piece that is kind of homage to Sol LeWitt. I don't think we have time to talk about her love for Sol LeWitt, just to say that um the notion of leap, so leap-year, yeah is a leap-year, obviously a gap-year or whatever, but the notion of leap for soliwit is applied in terms of being in a sort of technical exist form of existence
00:58:15
Speaker
or action and then leaping to an the same thing and leap into a conceptual existence, for example. So there's a sort of a leap. And he says that artists are mysticists rather than rationalists. you know They can leap to conclusions that ah you know reason cannot support.
00:58:32
Speaker
So for her, the idea of leap is really important and she loves Solo, there's lots of or she emulates him some somehow. The titles are great. I think that the thing with her that I so admire is that everything is so carefully thought through, but with a poetic kind of simplicity. yeah She has another exhibition. She had a big retrospective exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in 2018 that was called ETA 1998-2018.
00:59:05
Speaker
which is just genius estimated time of arrival 1998 and which probably was the survey you know between those years of production yeah so she has this kind of notion of time and space as a sort of a movement between forms of consciousness almost. It's so interesting. I think that's so right. I think you've really hit the nail on the head because i i while I was going through the exhibition, I kept feeling this notion or hearing this this phrase of this feels like fully formed ideas.
00:59:43
Speaker
You know, that and i couldn't I couldn't really pinpoint what I even meant by that. But I think what you're saying is just that she, you know, there's some things that are simple. Like, I mean, even the Venetian Blinds, are they're kind of simple in their own way. I mean, they're a simple structure in and of themselves.
01:00:00
Speaker
But i you get the sense like there can be simplicity that is lightweight and simplicity that is not. That is that that has a lot of gravity to it. yes And she is that ladder. And it's I love that it's almost ineffable kind of to to really pinpoint what that, you know, it's ah it's a dink distinction with a huge difference, you know, and yeah, yeah she's great. I mean, I loved um just going back to the the kind of basket weaving animals. That was the, or but they're not animals necessarily. I mean, they were kind of ah inspired by
01:00:40
Speaker
um Japanese and Korean, ah like those giant puppets that they have in parades. Yes. ah That take many people to perform with that are phenomenal to watch. So they're kind of they're sort of smaller versions of those somehow. And um that was the only place i I felt like they were all kind of cramped in a corner. I was like, I want them to be I wanted a big space. But so you go up the stairs and as you go up,
01:01:10
Speaker
you enter a room that has a lot of the works with Venetian blinds. There are separations made by Venetian blinds, which is kind of the most chaotic room, let's say, where she tried to cram a lot of stuff in there. Yeah. There's a big piece called, I think, Rubenois. It's a street where Marguerite Juhass lived in Paris. Oh, yes. Yeah. But she doesn't state. I mean, there's lots of texts explaining lots of stuff.
01:01:39
Speaker
in the exhibition. So you get a lot of information from the text.
Connection of Personal and Historical in Art
01:01:43
Speaker
um And so apparently that piece is based on every appliance she had at at home at the time. um And it's the exact size of Marguerite Juhass' apartment or one of the rooms. um So there's a sort of superimposition between two lives. And across the exhibition, there are these references of people that she kind of merges with in some way. So there's her mom. There's ah those political activists that are mentioned downstairs. There's Marguerite Juras, who obviously, and this is this is the apartment where she where she lived while from memory, she was waiting for her husband to come back from the wall and he comes back
01:02:31
Speaker
em emaciated, like to a point where he looked like he was dead to her. It was a kind of a, there's a book called, I think it's La Vie Materielle, Material Life, where she talks about this.
01:02:42
Speaker
um And so there's so it's that period, like very strange period, which is akin to her own life where shec just South Korea just came out of a dictatorship. Her father went through what he went through, and then she kind of emerges in a freer life, a freer context. um And then there's a piece that I loved the most, one of them.
01:03:08
Speaker
um which is disappointing because her work is amazing, her work with materials is incredible, but that just broke me. The texts on the wall, so there's 12 printed A4 pages on the wall, basically, which are a correspondence between her mother and herself.
01:03:25
Speaker
oh yeah yeah or where the two of them decided to talk about her mom's arrival in Germany. And so the two of them have are talking about the same period of time and how they experienced each other's presence, how the mom experienced Germany, and how Haigui Yang experienced her arrival, the arrival of her mom in Germany, her idea of what who her mom was and who she really was there. And it's, I found the story absolutely heartbreaking in its banality. And it's... Yeah. Was there like the flooding? Wasn't there the flooding of the bathroom? So the mom at some point finds herself taking a bath because that's the thing that connects her to Korea. Because in Korea, you wash yourself
01:04:22
Speaker
Thoroughly and baths are important. They clean your soul. They have a significance. They're spiritual. And so she goes and draws a bath. And then when she wants to drain the water away, she goes into a panic because there's no um there's no drain.
01:04:41
Speaker
And so she calls Hagwe Young and says, what is happening? Your your your apartment is faulty. There's no drain. Where is the drain? Where is the drain? She gets really panicky and only to realize later when her daughter tells her that in Germany, people don't bathe like that. That's not how it works. You go into the bathtub and you don't just put water all over the bathroom like in Korea. Yeah.
01:05:09
Speaker
And again, it's like that piece with the sitting tables. ah Such a small, she doesn't need to say a lot. You don't need her biography. You don't need her to tell you 500 anecdotes of the differences between cultures because this is far more deep than that. yeah This is when you realize in another language that there's a word for something that doesn't exist in some other language that you speak and you think what a moment of solitude. There's also this cultural solitude that you can be in and this emancipation through things that are so familiar to you that suddenly is not possible, even if you were to do them.
01:05:52
Speaker
there's something that's not magical anymore. There's something, so there's a lot to say about these, did this piece. and And it's against these very cold objects. So one thing to say about Hey We're Young that I kind of struggled with a little bit is that the objects are perfect. Yeah.
01:06:10
Speaker
They're just you know the appliances with the Venetian blinds with everything's so clean, everything's so perfect, everything's measured to the millimeter, everything's produced, and the light comes and and and suddenly you're looking at the box that's covered with the Venetian, that has a sort of Venetian blinds hiding what's inside and there's a sunsetty light that emanates through it and that you know and everything's just so beautiful and just so elegantly done.
01:06:39
Speaker
And then you realize where that comes from. And there's this kind of, there was a sort of a moment there in that room when I was thinking, this makes me think of the arts where we weren't this kind of effervescence of working with standardized and mass produced materials and having international careers and exhibiting from country to country, guilt free, anything was possible. This was before obviously 2008.
01:07:09
Speaker
um And there's this thing at the end of the 90s, and there's this thing sometimes in her work that takes me back to that time, because the use of mass produced materials inevitably will tell me that. It will bring me to that idea of these Venetian blinds are all over the world, and that's her point as well. yeah You can find them in Brazil, you can find them in Yucatan, you can find them in Porto, you can find them everywhere. um But there's also the fact that they're the materials that you're making the work with and then suddenly the work becomes desensitized because it is using those materials and it's saying that thing.
01:07:54
Speaker
But I think she's talking about culture and I'm thinking of production. But I can't really separate the two, if that makes sense. So there's a part of me in her work that kind of goes back to that time. And there's a quote of her um where there's ah in an interview in the catalogue where she's talking about the way she works.
01:08:16
Speaker
that kind of struck me, and I'm going to read it to you. So she says, I have been working at Stade Schuller, my alma mater, since 2017. And these days, my schedule is predetermined by my teaching job and the academic calendar. during the so So you think, oh, she doesn't have a lot of time to work. yeah And then she says, during the semester, I stay in Berlin and travel in Europe and North America. So already you're like, oh, leap.
01:08:46
Speaker
yeah Europe, North America. And during the school break, I do my work in and out of Seoul. OK, well, she you know, that the dimension of her life is huge. I'm trying to spend more time in Asia. Last December, for example, I was in Bangkok in Chiang Rai, Thailand for three weeks. I spent a couple of days in Manila in March 2024, and I wish to go back to the Philippines soon on a long-desired field trip to trace and explore Pabalat, the tradition of paper cutting in a Filipino context.
01:09:21
Speaker
Pabalat has a very vague origin. It may have been derived from Chinese paper cutting brought by Chinese merchants or could also have been an offshoot of the Mexican technique of papel picado. In this paragraph, since 2017,
01:09:39
Speaker
we've been all over the world. yeah yeah yeah And to me, and it's also, I have a question and unfortunately you're not Asian, you can't tell me, but for me, it's really weird because I keep thinking about if I'm Portuguese, there's a lot of arts and crafts in Portugal.
01:09:58
Speaker
What would it mean if an artist went back to basket weavers and what and started kind of using those techniques to make big objects? And we have an artist who does that, Joanna Vashkonselj. And then there's another installation that is about the first work she did in Korea, which was to go back to her grandparents' home that was derelict, basically, in shambles.
01:10:26
Speaker
and do an art installation there. And that is absolutely incredible. So she has those two aspects of the migrant who is in the super modern in Germany. well but I mean, Germany is not what it was. but in Germany, so a highly and historically industrialized ah country. yeah And at the same time, she has that thing of, I'm going to go back to that home.
Exploration of Heritage Through Art Installations
01:10:53
Speaker
I'm going to work with origami. work I mean, origami might not be the correct word. I don't know if it translates to Korea. I'm going to work with lamps, lights, little objects. And the installations, it's called Saigon 30, I think.
01:11:09
Speaker
it's it was an exhibition and she and she kept the notes that people left about the exhibition that were super moving and they're projected onto a Venetian blind. And that's where it shifted for me. And I thought, okay, okay, there really is something where she's incredibly honest. you know What I'm hearing you say is that she's kept the threads. you know She hasn't moved around and dropped the threads necessarily of you know, art that influenced her as a child or things than experiences she had when she was younger. It's like it's all built in rather than, oh, I'm moving here, so I'm dropping this. It's like, I mean, you know, I guess actually like her big piece of, you know, unpacking all of her. um The storage piece. The storage piece. Yeah, exactly. She takes it with her. Like she's not, she's
01:12:06
Speaker
she's she's building onto and folding into rather than you know just sort of dropping and being like, okay, now I'm going to go for this very clean, you know mass-produced aesthetic. it's it's but that It all is coming from that place. And yeah, maybe that's where the weight is, you know is that you can feel that in it.
01:12:27
Speaker
I was just reading this article in The Atlantic by Annie Lowry about like basically it was like women put down the vacuums. It was a thing about domestic ah labor.
01:12:40
Speaker
and The eternal question. the ah Forever, right? And it's like there's married women do more domestic labor than single women.
01:12:52
Speaker
But married men do not do more domestic labor than single men. Like, you know, shock. Yeah, exactly. And and her um I mean, her her kind of point of it was, you know, just just put down the fact like, let's not let's stop killing ourselves for feeling like we need to rise to a standard of very tidy homes and therefore performing our gender in that way. That's a little off course. But the but I liked that that Haggu Yang was using those very familiar unimportant domestic objects. I mean, who's who is looking after the blinds? you know I mean, I have taken a wet rag in my spring cleaning and wiped each and every blind of the thick dust that manages to get caked on there.
01:13:44
Speaker
And, you know, so, so I feel like my connection to those domestic objects are so deep, I can't even, I did, you know, you don't even realize it, right, until you see them.
01:14:01
Speaker
reflected in the way that she has presented them and it's like wow there is like these are the things of our lives these are the things that are in our homes and you know what we're interacting with every day and it would be very very easy to say you know that that's just very low you know and she's not trying to be clever about them no she's not trying to be but what do you mean by that i know i i think but what do you mean Well, i say that I mean, like Mike Kelly, for example, is very clever. He is being in your face with it and I'm saying something with this and this is the thing and I'm going to shock you a little bit with what I'm saying or just, you know, kind of ah give you a barrage of sentence senses with, you know, this thing, this twirling curtain, you know, or whatever it is. And she's not. She's she's saying this is a
01:15:00
Speaker
You know, this is a thing that we can make a construction from that will be a beautiful object in and of itself, you know, without any kind of tongue-in-cheek gotcha. I mean, those Venetian blinds, again, with the light and the shadows on the on the ground and the the way that they hold the images. They'll send it in the middle of the room and create spaces. And our screens that films are projected onto.
01:15:30
Speaker
And there's this kind of idea of the ritualization of the everyday life is the deep feeling that the meaning is there as soon as you displace it. It's kind of sad. It's a bit melancholy. Thinking of those Venetian blind structures, it's like they're very um rigid in a way. They're so they're strong. you know They're their're cubes.
01:16:00
Speaker
stacked on cubes, stacked on cubes often. And that's a very strong looking structure, but then the blinds themselves have that delicacy of letting through the light. And there's something wonderful about the intersection of and the play of that that I think makes them just such a pleasure to be in the presence of, you know that that that it's so much is true about this thing. And you know it's it's very simply demonstrating that. so yeah And it and it it kind of relates to the mesmerizing mesh pieces. Yeah. So she- So she wanna talk about those? Yeah. That's ah that's the her most recent work, basically.
01:16:48
Speaker
She did she did them mostly during COVID. um And they're ah pieces on a wall and they are when I first looked at them, my first thought was like, Oh, tissue paper, it looks like tissue paper, because it's very colorful, very delicate paper.
Use of Traditional Korean Materials in Art
01:17:05
Speaker
that she's cut into collages to look like they're like different spirits, I guess? Well, there's different groups of them. So some of them are like these patterns, these yeah shapes, they're more abstract. And there's some that are more figural, let's say, that they have these small kind of almost totemic like, yeah, creatures, some of them are almost like animals. um Some of them start looking like something and then destructure or adjust structure at some point. And they look like those drawings that you make when you're a kid when you
01:17:43
Speaker
you fold paper and you cut with scissors and then you open them. So this was a rabbit hole I went down, hanji, it's called hanji paper. Okay, tell me more. And so, you know, if we're going back to the delicate but strong theme, this is absolutely it. So it's made from mulberry bark, because yeah, when I first saw it, I was like, oh, this is the kind of childlike, it looks like tissue paper, it has that kind of color quality, etc.
01:18:12
Speaker
And then when I was online, and she was talking about this Hanji paper, that sort of traditional Korean, Japanese paper, it's made from the bulk of mulberry trees. um the The bark is mixed with kind of the slime of other roots. So like it's it you know put in sort of a vat, and then it's you know, put together with the slime so that it has something that congeals it a bit like putting an egg in, you know, something that you're baking. And then, you know, it has to be made by hand and it's ah it's a really artistic process in and of itself to make this paper. um But it can last for a thousand years. The works themselves are really arresting. I mean, they are just
01:19:04
Speaker
they really grab your attention and they have a lot of presence, whatever the form is. I mean, those sort of tatamic figures you were talking about, I would say in particular, but, um, and it also made me think just, you know, someone who, she was in Korea during, uh, COVID. She was stuck there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just love the fact that she was like, what do I have to hand? What is near me and what You know, what what what what can I make that's brilliant out of this? That it just, I loved the notion of her kind of being trapped wherever she was, as we all were, and just sitting there and figuring out how to produce these incredible works. Yeah, I just loved that. I read a ah little bit of the parts of the catalogue that talks about them. So she was looking into shamanism.
01:19:59
Speaker
And so these papers I used in shamanistic rituals. Another thing that I thought, particularly when I read that this had to do, so I was arrested by the beauty of it and I was kind of stuck there looking at them. And then when I read the text that had to do with shamanistic practices, again, I go back to that thing, which is a question in the art world, which is that when you're not a shaman yourself,
01:20:26
Speaker
when you go and take someone else's beliefs through their techniques or take the techniques outside of the beliefs and outside of the rituals and the practices and the system that they're within, i I think there's a lot of questions in there. There's a lot of things that you can ask yourself. What does that mean? Is is it a a bit soulless, you know, to to come and grab these things um and to then produce these perfect pieces. And then she explains that in order to better convey this context, she and enshrined them. So there's a around the drawings, there's this frame that replicates religious or spiritual architectures, temples um as frames. Then I was reading further and
01:21:24
Speaker
Apparently, so we were saying that the arts and crafts are respected in Korea. But there's, again, no one escapes globalism, I guess. So in Korea, ah there's this um phenomenon of even the curator of shamanism in the arts and crafts museum or in maybe another museum, I may remember incorrectly, is being a bit discriminated So shamanism is really being discarded in society. It was considered backwards. So if you stay there, you think, OK, so this is a global phenomenon. And all these traditions that existed up until now are dying. But actually, if you read further into the catalog is amazing. I have to say it's so nice, yeah easy to read, yeah good texts. And so apparently during Confucius time, shamanism was also
01:22:20
Speaker
not well considered and even dangerous to practice. right So shamanism has always had this status of this difficult status within Korean society. It's complexifies this question that I was asking, which is this, okay, what I'm skirting around the the term of appropriation, like are you appropriating something?
Cultural Appropriation and Art's Dynamic Nature
01:22:45
Speaker
And what does that mean? You're an immigrant, you go back to your country,
01:22:49
Speaker
and you appropriate these techniques that you haven't even experienced. you know It's the same with when I see ah perfect sculptures with basket weaving techniques, there's always this moment where I think, oh, not the question of appropriation, that's not really the thing, but it's that thing of, is art capable of bringing the energy, the beauty and something from these beliefs and from these practices and from these social structures into society, into culture by doing this? Or is this the symptom of a dying culture and a way perhaps to take it somewhere else or to pay homage to it and even to mourn it? You know, because her creatures are like celebratory creatures. I like parade creatures. For sure. I mean, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, is it is it a case of
01:23:47
Speaker
she should leave this work to people who feel it. Oh no, I would not ever say or prescribe anything to anyone. I think if there's a compulsion to make, there's a question to be asked. I think it's a valid question. I don't have the answers for it. And I loved the exhibition. I really, really loved the exhibition. i And I think good art asks these questions and we ourselves,
01:24:16
Speaker
do things, consume things, produce things that may be symptoms of um problematic situations of yeah gentrification. I don't like this cause in Paris. They're uncomfortable. I prefer Starbucks much more comfortable. I never go there because I have have principles. yeah But if you give me a good pub or a good cafe, let's say,
01:24:42
Speaker
with the goods couches, I don't like the bistro. I would love the bistro to disappear. I don't like it, you know, but it's a tradition, right? So sure sure i' this is a very, very silly example, but you know what I mean? I'm not prescribing anything. I'm asking questions sure because I think these works make you think of these things. And then and in the text and in her interviews, you can see that she's thinking about these things. She's thinking like any migrant would, I think migration enhances those experiences of loss yeah um and of transmission and of political programs that cancel out a lot of ways of existing.
01:25:24
Speaker
i mean the Portuguese dictatorship ended or a dialect. There's only one surviving dialect in the Portuguese um metropolitan area. You know, that's my question. That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, and kind of like how how essential is the death, like death, death of a dialect or death of a, you know, a culture or death of a thing ist is a natural state of affairs as well, I guess. So it's like, but how much and under what conditions?
01:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah, that's it. Under what conditions, if it's dying a natural death, yeah like Latin did? Sure, you know. um it's ah it's It's a very specific, and I think her pointing out to shamanism is connected with abstraction, with her immense knowledge of contemporary art and how, I think we mentioned this or I mentioned this somewhere in another episode,
01:26:25
Speaker
We're looking at the history of modernism as very patriarchal and even imperialistic because Picasso was inspired by African masks, you know, and kind of invented cubism. Do you know what I mean? So there's this thing of ah really being very careful now with um maybe deeper connections to images. Contemporary art is not an Asian notion. It's an imported notion.
01:26:53
Speaker
So she is working in something that was a colonization yeah you know of the Asian, or or let's say of Korea, but also the Asian continent and culture. There was no contemporary art. you know there's a there's It's a practice that is imported. And in the beginning, she you know in the museums in Korea, you mostly had European or American exhibitions. You didn't have Korean artists showing, and she was one of the first artists to show in the Liam Museum. And she's also talking to professionals and to the museum. You know, what does it mean to have an exhibition that is ongoing, that you have to activate, and that you have to reinstall, which is a storage piece?
01:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to describe without describing the room that it's in. So in there's sort of three interconnecting rooms and all of the the the walls between them are sort of normal from the ceiling until about, ah you know, three quarters of the way down. And then they are, you can, they're like, you can see the frame of the wall. And then there are ah like sandbags underneath the wall in the frame. So it's kind of like this unfinishedness, I guess, and you know this um you know that you kind of it's almost like these these bags are the kind of bags of sand or something that you might throw on ah the side of a river that's overflowing.
01:28:29
Speaker
um but there So it's in it's in quite a unique space in and of itself. And then storage piece is this huge palette filled with packaged up pieces of her art.
01:28:45
Speaker
And there's a rope around it. And when I was there, which was great too, they were putting up new works of art on the wall. So they had just, as I walked into the room, they were... I definitely need to visit exhibitions with you, Emily. i love Nothing was activated.
01:29:03
Speaker
Nothing was, you know, displaced. The artist wasn't there wasn't there. She sort of consults with the museum staff about which ones to put up and how to hang them and stuff like that. So um I assume that's what she was in the in the gallery for. It's kind of a very artfully packed palette, wouldn't you say? I mean, it's sort of abnormally high in a way, and um it just shows you everything that she has had to bring around with her as an artist who's been creating art for 25 years. It really is quite something to bring such perfect objects. Like I was saying, like these absolutely immaculately produced pieces of art
01:29:52
Speaker
and then to have that rubbish there. I don't know, I'm with you. i ah It wasn't amazing. I really want to come go back. And by the way, Emily, I want to understand what I did. Did I touch the wrong sculpture? Yes, you did. Yes. And on that note, it's a wrap. He was talking about the bell curtain. Easily done. Sorry, hey, we're young. Easily done.
01:30:21
Speaker
You know, what can you do? Well, this was great. I mean, I have to say I knew nothing about Hagoo Yang before this exhibition, which not that uncommon for me. Oh, I didn't know much, to be very honest with you. Yeah, the guy at the gallery that I was talking to was saying how, you know, she just isn't that well known in the UK. You know, obviously much more so in Berlin, but But yeah, what a treat. What an absolute treat for the senses. I mean, it felt like it felt like like her storage piece. She was just reaching back in her cultural history and her own memory and her own ideas and just just unfolding them and presenting them in a way that one could relate to. I mean, which I think is such a difficult thing to do. you know I mean, i felt I felt like I could understand something about
01:31:16
Speaker
what her experience was this migrant experience and you know relate that to my own which is you know which is a thing but yeah so it was brilliant so thank you it was lovely chatting with you about it this was delightful and don't forget visit exhibitions because we visit them so that you have to yeah Take care. All right, brilliant. and Thanks everyone. Thanks, Rana. Take care. Bye-bye.