On the top floor of the Hayward Gallery in London is a colossal installation that demands the public’s attention. Created by Haegue Yang, it is composed of a staircase-like structure of ascending Venetian blinds and two moving spotlights that perform a hypnotic dance to classical music that casts intertwined shadows on the walls and floor. Its parts may be simple, but taking it as a whole is a poetic experience.

“Poetic is, for me personally, a very polluted word,” Yang said. “Other people can say that, but I can’t. Maybe I have too much respect for poetry.” Work, entitled Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024), is an ambitious new commission featured in Leap Year, an extensive exhibition at the Hayward Gallery that marks Yang’s first UK survey. Organized by Yung Mathe gallery’s chief curator, the show can be understood as an exploration of the unique dynamic that develops between an artist and a curator in the making of an exhibition. It’s also ultimately a show about how desire fuels creativity.

Installation view of “Haegue Yang: Leap Year”. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the artist and Hayward Gallery.

The South Korean artist is very conscious of her choice of most words, as is clearly seen in the performance. Even though some of the elements of her work are simple – she is known for presenting everyday household items, such as drying racks, on a large scale – the titles of the exhibited works can be long and complicated. Detailed wall texts are also common alongside her installations, as if they too are part of the works. These extended strings of words represent the art-making process for Yang, who likens it to “weaving a piece of fabric so complex that it is impossible to unweave.”

If making art is like weaving, then curating is like tailoring: gathering all the artist’s fabric into a comfortable garment to wear. “Creating art and making exhibitions are very different processes, but they are both creative processes,” Yang said. Compared to a project-based exhibition, which features mostly newly created work, a survey exhibition “is more than tailoring a piece of clothing because all the textiles are already made and when we have hundreds of pieces of fabric,” a she added. “It’s like reading, making a road, or landscaping.”

Installation view of “Haegue Yang: Leap Year”. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the artist and Hayward Gallery.

Yang and Ma have known each other for nearly a decade, and the show feels like an intimate exploration of the artist’s work because of that. Most of the works on display have been drawn from the artist’s archive, tracing her practice since 1995. The exhibition features iconic works from some of her most notable series, including ‘Light Sculptures’ and ‘Sonic Sculptures’, as well as early pieces from her ‘installations by Venetian blinds” and her performative sculptures known as Clothing vehicles. For anyone unfamiliar with her work, they provide a brief primer on the artist’s visual poetry.

Yang, 51, has split her time between Seoul and Berlin since the mid-1990s. She has long been interested in connecting personal and political histories, as well as folklore and nature. This is reflected in some of the new works conceived or reworked with Ma’s help. For example, freshly ordered Grading Sonic Drops — Water Veil (2024) is an interactive work that invites the audience to pass through a curtain of silver and blue stainless steel bells that emit ringing sounds as they enter the exhibition. For Yang, sonic reverberations have been a way to explore the relationship between the spiritual and material realms for years. The decision to create the work and install it at the entrance was made in the early stages of the show’s planning, as it provides an immediate immersive experience while fusing East Asian and Western artistic traditions.

Haegue Yang, Sonic lifelines(2021-2022). Installation view at M+, Hong Kong, 2021. © Haegue Yang. Photo: Lok Check & Dan Leung. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong.

Star-Crossed Encounter after Yun, on the other hand, it was not part of the original plan. Yang created it with the encouragement of Ma, who has a deep understanding of Yang’s practice and a personal awareness of her creative obsession with the Korean-born composer. Isang Yun. For years, Yang has deeply researched Yun, a Korean political dissident.

Born in 1917, when the Korean peninsula was under Japanese occupation, Yun was imprisoned and tortured for taking part in the resistance against Japan. He became part of the international avant-garde after establishing a musical career in Berlin, but was kidnapped by the Korean secret police in 1967 and brought back to Seoul. After his release two years later, he returned to Berlin, where he continued to compose and teach music until his death in 1995.

Installation view a Star-Crossed Rendezvous after Yun (2024) to “Haegue Yang: Leap Year”. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the artist and Hayward Gallery.

“He was one of those artists who lived his life in the middle of this political rupture,” Yang said. “Every South Korean has heard of his name, but people would rather know about his political narratives than his music, which was quickly forgotten. It seemed very out of proportion to me, which also stimulated my curiosity (about him).

Her curiosity became consuming – one might even say eager – and she took every opportunity to listen to his music and also meet people who knew him while he was alive. “It has been a long-standing wish of mine to ‘exorcise’ Isang Yun from me,” Yang said. However, the only type of work she has done so far that is related to it was a text-based piece, a 2018 conceptual work entitled A chronology of combined dispersal – Duras and Yun. It refers to biographies of Yun and French novelist Marguerite Duras, who shared a similar timeline to Yun.

The Yun-inspired installation at the Hayward Gallery felt “risky,” Yang said, but it also gave him an opportunity to “step into the unknown.” It is the result of her interpretation of the composer’s contemplative and romantic piece of music, Double concert (1977). Music refers to a Korean folk tale about doomed lovers who were torn apart at opposite ends of the galaxy and were only allowed to meet once a year. The choreography of the two moving spotlights, separated by the structure of the Venetian blinds, are connected by music.

of Haegue Yang Windy Terrace Beyond Reach (2024), installed on the terrace of the Hayward Gallery in London. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the artist and Hayward Gallery.

“You know, for us, the reunification term is a political issue. I think a lot about Isang Yun, an act of following your mind. He took this love story, a romantic motif embedded in a folk tale, and expanded it,” explained the artist. “In my interpretation, he was talking about his time, lived history, while referring to ancient times. I see this in my practice as well.”

Another very personal work in the show reflects some of these themes. 30 Sadong (2006) was originally installed at her grandfather’s former house, which was then abandoned and run down; the title of the paper is the address of the house. It marked the artist’s first solo exhibition in Korea and is considered a pivotal moment in her career as it introduced some of the themes that now define her work, not only the repurposing of everyday objects as surrogates for thoughts and feelings, but also the inclusion. of narratives that blur the line between private thought and public memory. 30 Sadong it also reflects on the passage of time and the changes Yang has seen in the urban fabric of her native country. Ma decided to reconstruct this piece for the Hayward Gallery survey, motivated by his own “selfishness” to see the work he had never experienced, while providing a rare glimpse into Yang’s world.

“I would read that (selfishness) as wishful thinking,” Yang noted. “Desire has a lot to do with creativity.”

Leap Year runs until 5 January 2025 at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank, London.