Haegue Yang: Leap Year

For the first time in Switzerland, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst presents a survey exhibition of the Berlin- and Seoul-based artist Haegue Yang. Leap Year brings together Yang’s work from the early 2000s to the present. Central to her work are themes of migration, displacement, and cross-cultural perspectives, often drawn from personal and broader historical contexts. Yang invites audiences to contemplate established narratives and reflect on their own lived experiences and identities, while often highlighting underrepresented figures of modernism. At the core of her practice is an aim to engage viewers, ensuring they do not remain indifferent to the layers of meaning embedded in her art.

Leap Year features new commissions and productions, offering a multisensory experience through installation, sculpture, collage, text, video, wallpaper, and sound. Yang transforms everyday items such as drying racks, nylon pom-poms, hand-knitted yarn, and lightbulbs in her work. These objects are familiar and easily identifiable, yet they present themselves to the spectator with ambiguity. Yang’s sculptures often possess anthropomorphic qualities, which can evoke feelings of empathy or sympathy. Highlights in the exhibition include the new commission, “Sonic Droplets in Gradation – Water Veil” (2024), where visitors walk through a curtain of bells, and the mobile performative sculpture “Sonic Dress Vehicle – Hulky Head” (2018). Both of these works reflect Yang's focus on modular structures and the interplay of geometry and movement, enriched by references to East Asian traditions and modernism. Additionally her series, “The Intermediates” (2015-) draws from shamanistic and global weaving traditions, and incorporates materials such as artificial straw.

The exhibition is organised by the Hayward Gallery, London in association with Kunsthal Rotterdam and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.