Haegue Yang (born 1971 in Seoul, Korea; lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and Seoul) has lived in Europe since the mid-1990s and has shown extensively in Germany as well as in Korea ever since. Yang’s deceptively casual installations, videos, artist books, and drawings act as furtive interruptions into the viewer’s habitual perceptual practices. In Yang’s Grid Block (2000), sixteen sheets of paper are ruled like scientific graph paper, but their accuracy is undermined upon closer inspection because the squares are of varying colors and widths. Similarly, her installations of random everyday or utilitarian objects, such as Venetian blinds, lightbulbs, and electric heaters in her Series of Vulnerable Arrangements (2006), are carefully and precisely arranged to create a stimulating and harmonious grouping. Her works not only embrace the melancholy associated with dislocation, or being out of context, but also celebrate the beauty of relocation, or finding new connections and meanings in new places.
