Hyperallergic has praised the sculpture of South Korean artist Haegue Yang for the ways it effortlessly combines “references to Western art history, domestic design, non-Western spiritual practices, meteorology, folk traditions and globalized trade.” Last month, Yang opened two major shows at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and her gallery, kurimanzutto, in Mexico City. In town for ZONAMACO, Observer caught up with the artist in CDMX to hear more about both of these ambitious exhibitions.
The show “Arcane Abstractions” includes both sculptures and two-dimensional works, while the Nasher Sculpture Center is known primarily for sculpture. Let’s start by discussing “Lost Lands and Sunken Fields” at the Nasher. How do you view your work within the context of this medium?
Just to give a bit of background, the initial discussion about the possibility of an exhibition at the Nasher as well as the presentation of my last solo exhibition at kurimanzutto, titled “Ornament and Abstraction,” were seven years ago. Both exhibitions have gone through a long gestation period, and many things have happened personally, professionally and in the world during that time. My production has also transformed and evolved greatly. Those seven years allowed me to develop far enough to feel a necessity to make entirely new sculptures.
Especially for the Nasher, I developed enough trust in the curator and institution to propose exhibiting entirely new works instead of typical sculptures. And in the show at kurimanzutto, I dared to include archival materials and documentation from field trips, as well as loaned artifacts and rare materials from the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City, next to my own works, which can be seen as taboo in a solo show at a gallery. As the sources of my productions are revealed through archival materials on anthropological topics, this show appears hybrid. If it had been three or four years earlier, I wouldn’t have dared to show my works next to those research materials.
What changed?
I see myself as a sculptor, and sculpture-making is central to my practice. And I was pushing myself beyond what I had already begun or have previously done. There were two key turning points—around 2006 and then in 2018 or 2019—in my internal flow of development. Those turning points, which resulted in adventurous works, often coincided with encounters with certain institutional curators. And my growing trust in them generated opportunities for daring experimentations. When I said, as it happened at the Nasher, that “I want to do something small and light,” I could rely on the trust and support of the curator Leigh Arnold to shape my vision.
While my work has physically expanded in quantity, scale, and diversity in the last decades, my doubt about the direction of my practice has also grown. During the COVID pandemic, I even went through a personal crisis, strongly questioning my drifting lifestyle in the world and my split existence in two places since it was not only physical movement that became difficult but also the logistics of my production and work. While I was stuck in Seoul for a year, my uncertainty about whether I could continue, as well as the idea of “small and light,” slowly emerged.
Was “small and light” your way of seeking relief—something manageable in a time of heaviness?
Yes, to practically solve the growing shipping cost and relieve the guilt of producing physically big stuff to transport, as well as actively looking for more sustainable production as a sculptor. There was also the idea of becoming more mobile, sustainable, eco-friendly and adaptable in a world that’s increasingly degraded by pollution, consumption and acceleration. And furthermore, to relieve the burden of mastery on the level of scale and materiality. I wanted to return to the status of uncertainty by doing something unknown to me as a return to vulnerability, which has been a key theme for me since the early 2000s.
As the opening at the Nasher was only a few weeks ago, I’m still digesting Mignon Votives (2025) and Airborne Paper Creatures – Triple Synecology (2025). Even if the majority of the production-related journey remains on my shoulders, many things were decided on collaboratively. It’s crucial that artists and institutions are in the same boat together, as I view my career as institutional.
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Even an intense and singular piece, like The Malady of Death, a series of stage projects that began in 2010 as a life commitment, was initiated through a blunt proposal by the curator Doryun Chong, who said, “Why don’t you try staging this yourself?” Despite my intense obsession with the book by Marguerite Duras, I still would never have dared to have the idea of staging it. That’s the strange, miraculous relationship between artist and curator. Another example is my second survey show at the Hayward Gallery in London last year, following Museum Ludwig. Since I had learned so much about institutional scholarship on a survey show from working closely with Museum Ludwig, I didn’t want to be so hands-on with the second survey show. As I’m opinionated, I would often argue, but ultimately, I didn’t make the final decisions—and I think that was the best choice for some shows, including “Leap Year” at the Hayward Gallery. The selection by the curator Yung Ma included many pieces that were quite unusual to me. Some works are iconic, while others were works that I wouldn’t have selected for such an important show. The curator sought out pieces that had been long forgotten, which refreshed the entire trajectory of my work. It was a different kind of confidence that grew and contributed to the strength of each exhibition.
Your approach to collaboration is unique compared to many other artists, which leads me to my next question. I see in your work, especially in this show, the interplay between the organic and the technological. The pieces feel both futuristic and naturally occurring. How do you feel about blending these influences?
To compare the two shows—”Arcane Abstractions” at kurimanzutto, Mexico City and “Lost Lands and Sunken Fields” at the Nasher Sculpture Center—I structured both quite architecturally. The layout of “Arcane Abstraction” was made by counting the crossbeams on the ceiling to build a successive passage; Ximenawa (2025) is placed on the first beam and La Cuerda de Cuatro Colores (2025) at the end of the space as ritualistic demarcation object-brackets that prevent the evil spirits from entering the exhibition. As the title demonstrates, “Lost Lands and Sunken Fields” in Dallas plays with the vertical dimension, since my show spans two floors.
One of the Nasher’s five parallel bays is the entrance gallery, where Airborne Paper Creatures –Triple Synecology, three groups of small and light birchwood mobiles, adorned with various papers, are presented. Each group is inspired by birds, underwater life and insects—Flutterers, Swimmers and Crawlers—and floats above us in an airy, almost ethereal space that opens up, merging with the light, climate, and weather. It introduces the idea of creatures. The main gallery, which runs parallel to it, is also populated with various forms in two groups, Mignon Votives – Pebble Parades (2025) and Mignon Votives – Seedpod Statues (2025), yet lie rather low on the floor. Here, with Mignon Votives, I continued exploring elevation, but with an emphasis on extensive flatness that visitors have to sink their gaze, which invites a microscopic perspective in serene calmness, while there is the sound of a pebblestone beach in South Korea.
These two landscapes are populated with sculptures made from different materials—pine cone shapes and stacked stones. Are you trying to highlight the false dichotomy between organic and inorganic?
But the stones are alive. In Inuit art, stone sculptures, as well as portable miniature bone sculptures or talismans, are often seen as living objects that need to breathe. Many museums struggle to display Inuit art because Inuit artists would refuse to show them in glass cases.
Why not use real stones?
The stones in my work are not real stones; they’re made of clay, air-dried, and painted, yet are displayed on real moss and plains of river stone that together build a contemporary hybridscape at the exhibition. These hybrid fields visually extend through the glass front on both ends of the exhibition bays.
However, it wasn’t a conceptual decision. Now, I am in a phase of empowering my decisions retrospectively—juxtaposing clay stones on real river stone beds makes more and more sense to me. I refer to it as post-production because many of my choices are made without fully understanding why. I sometimes revisit my past exhibitions long after the opening, and my thoughts and understanding of what I am doing are still evolving as the research done prior to the exhibition is continuously being digested.
Would you consider yourself post-postmodern?
I don’t know about that, but I often joke that I’m simply schizophrenic. And I try not to take these labels too seriously. It is anyway hard to objectify oneself as an artist. On top of that, it is not my job to objectify myself as being such and such a practitioner.
In “Arcane Abstractions,” the influences—Slavic, Korean, Polish, Hmong, Japanese and Mexican—are diverse. How did you come to these influences? Could tell us about your interest in Mexican paper traditions?
One thing leads to another. I mobilize my personal informants and agents: galleries, artists, colleagues, curators, writers, friends of friends, relatives, etc. When I have a show, the institution often becomes an initial agent to rely on. However, what really counts is that I remain open and receptive to new influences. That means I need to be a good listener. My interest began with studying the use of Korean mulberry paper as ritualistic props in Korean shamanism and comparing them to those in Japanese Shinto in 2019. Korean shamanism is more wild and untouched compared to the centrally institutionalized State Shinto tradition in Japan. I traced these influences, which actually followed from my earlier curiosity in European paganism. Through my Manila show, I explored the fusion of Catholicism’s influences on indigenous artifacts, which is similar to many of the Slavic traditions where pagan rituals are merged with catholic elements. From my learning experience of papel picado, I also became aware of its roots in Chinese items, such as painted ornaments on ceramics as well as tissue paper, papel china.
Do you view any cultures as infertile for collaboration?
It is not necessary that I thematize the place or people where the exhibition takes place since I also often look inward instead of outward. However, sometimes, the city itself becomes a starting point for the exhibition, which was the case when I exhibited my piece at the biennale in Lahore in 2024.
Finally, can you explain the role of the fog machine in “Arcane Abstractions”?
It is, of course, not a body of work, but rather an ambient element. I often encounter people telling me that my show is too dense or overly layered, and I am aware that the fog machine in this show could be also seen as non-essential. However, I believe it adds a crucial layer and another dimension. Initially, I planned to include freestanding sculptures, but then I removed all of them and became focused on suspended pieces at various elevations. Even the wooden display in this show is floating. The fog is the only element that occupies the empty floor. Eventually it gets cleared and reveals the floor again, almost as if it rises and disappears in its own ecosystem. This conceptual element of absence and presence of the fog on the ground renders the entire empty floor.
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