PRESENTATION: Haegue Yang-Lost Lands and Sunken Fields, Part III

Over the past three decades, Haegue Yang has developed a prolific and hybrid body of work that folds quotidian objects and folk traditions into the canon of modern and contemporary sculpture-making. Informed by in-depth exploration into vernacular techniques and related customs and rituals, along with her continual movement through disparate cultures, Yang’s work is both homage to and critique of the modernist project toward singular Western domination (PartI, Part II).

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Nasher Sculpture Center Archive

Haegue Yang’s solo exhibition “Lost Lands and Sunken Fields” engages a dialectic of contrasts: light and dark, aerial and grounded, buoyant and heavy, spare and dense, interior and exterior. At street level, newly produced works respond to the building’s architecture, in particular the glass ceiling and end walls, which visibly connect the indoor spaces with the sky, garden, and street, while the subterranean spaces comprise new works that transition visitors from the light-filled galleries to the more cave-like experience of the Lower Level Gallery. In the entrance as the title suggests, “Airborne Paper Creatures – Triple Synecology” (2025) addresses three groups of suspended sculptures that further build upon the artist’s recent paper and bamboo kite series, which debuted in late 2024. Though emerging from similar points of reference, the kites here take on greater physicality through the use of CNC laser-cut birch plywood to compose the flat, primary body. “Airborne Paper Creature”s are then skinned with cut-mulberry or marbled paper embellishments, and adorned further with diverse beads, Punjabi goat bells, and, in some cases, parandy—traditional Punjabi hair ornaments made of multicolored silk threads and ornamental tassels. These latter elements link the “Airborne Paper Creatures” to their predecessors, while the cut-paper decorations used here share affinities with Yang’s paper collage series, “Mesmerizing Mesh” (2021–), as well as a new relief sculpture on view on the Lower Level under the stairs. Situated throughout the Entrance Gallery, three groups of “Airborne Paper Creatures” take flight as abstracted forms of fauna named for actions they take: “Flutterers” (birds), “Swimmers” (marine life), and “Crawlers”( insects). The secondary title for the series, “Triple Synecology”, refers to the study of interactions between species that share a habitat. As installed in this transitional space of the building—just beyond the entrance and ahead of the threshold to the garden—”Airborne Paper Creatures” call attention to the felt and heard environment. Currents of airflow prompted by the continual movement taking place just beneath the kites trigger subtle motion and the resonating sound of the bells. Yang divides the gallery 1 into two halves, opening a broad horizontal plane and suggesting an interior landscape evocative of Bogil Island’s pebble stone beaches and the Buyongdong gardens designed by the poet Yun Seon-do (1587-1671) during his exile to the southernmost tip of the Korean Peninsula. Yang’s “Mignon Votives” draw visitors’ attention to the floor where “Mignon Votives – Seedpod Statues” (2025) arise from the moss-covered ground. Comprising pinecones supported by bases of branches, roots, or driftwood, “Seedpod Statues” are intricately embellished with a mélange of organic and inorganic materials, such as artificial plants, feathers, bells, synthetic hair, dried spices, beads, pill capsules, Q-tips, cotton blossoms, and other everyday objects. Reminiscent of bonsai, the miniature-scaled “Seedpod Statues” suggest a sculptural evolution of the pinecones, resulting in hybrid forms that are at once natural and alien. On the other half of the gallery,  “Mignon Votives – Pebble Parades” (2025), small cairns of synthetic stones, emerge from a river-rock terrain and echo the universal ritual of stone stacking as an act of prayer for good fortune with simple offerings like bills sandwiched beneath or in between the layers of stones. The selection of facsimile banknotes here reflects the artist’s focus on the wide variety of fauna typically found on paper currency, rather than the conventional motifs of human figures, like royalty or politicians. In the midst of the field of river rock, “Pebble Parades” boast colorful imagery of such majestic creatures as elephants, rhinoceroses, llamas, and other wildlife as a form of heraldry. Together, the wish towers of stones and paper bills conflate monetary systems with the natural world to imply an arcane transactional tradition between culture and nature. “Pebble Parades” therefore function as miniature monuments to humanity’s desire to be in harmony with its environment.

In the garden by the terrace outside the Nasher Cafe, a woven black plastic twine sculpture titled “The Intermediate – Six-Legged Carbonous Epiphyte Imoogi” (2025) stretches its tentacle-like legs along a fountain wall. The “imoogi”, a snake-like mythological creature described in folklore as a “failed” giant dragon, is a recurring character in Yang’s ongoing series The Intermediates (2015–). This new iteration is both grounded and suspended and provides a dialogic link to related sculptures on view in the Nasher’s subterranean spaces.  In the lower level of the Museum, underneath the stairs and along the wall, a heterogeneous threesome of sculptures transitions visitors from the light-filled, street-level galleries to the underground spaces of the Nasher’s Lower Level. Along the wall, “Rotating Reflective Running Blade-Han- dle Faucets Identical Twins – Black Circles #24” (2023) is flanked by the new sculpture “Radial Tousled Epiphyte” (2025)—Yang’s first relief to incorporate paper flowers and the initial use of marbled paper in the artist’s works. The title describes its radial shape, as well as the role its paper flowers play as non-parasitic plants (epiphytes) growing on a butterfly-shaped creature. Radial “Tousled Epiphyte” is a continuation of Yang’s paper flower-making, which initially manifested as pagoda lanterns, with abundant ornamen- tations referencing Buddhist or shamanistic ritual objects. Both wall-mounted sculp- tures are backed by a black and white vinyl that plays with viewers’ perception and illu- sion. With its abstract, shifting patterns, the wall treatment suggests movement that becomes actualized through the “Rotating Reflective Running Blade-Handle Faucets Identical Twins” sculpture, whose mirroring circular elements spin when activated. When spinning, the faucets and water hoses begin to rotate, yet the mirrored image of the viewer remains still. Rotation as well as movement in general, have been recurring themes in Yang’s work for the last decade. For the artist, the artwork’s rotation refers to the intensity of movement without any change in location, suggesting an “unlearning” of many preconceptions about motion. The black water hoses transform into a pair of perfect circles when the sculpture is activated, revealing another leitmotif of Yang’s work: the twinning or pairing of objects, materials, or themes. This is further referenced through the inclusion of the artist’s “Non-Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Blue” (2018) in the context of this installation here at the foot of the staircase, while its counterpart, “Non-Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Orange” (2018) appears in the Lower Level Gallery as part of the installation Cenote Observatory. In contrast to the airy and floating installations or low-lying sculptural arrangements in the Nasher’s sunlit, street-level spaces, the densely populated Lower Level Gallery evokes an entirely different atmosphere. Manifold bodies of work transform the dimly lit gallery into an immersive survey of anthropomorphic sculptures. At the center of the installation is “Umbra Creatures by Rockhole” (2017–18), a seven-part sculptural ensemble either suspended or standing freely on casters that boast voluminous and tentacled bodies replete with bushy, hairy, metallic, and woven surfaces. “Umbra Creatures by Rockhole” bridges two series also in “Cenote Observatory : Sonic Sculptures” (2013–) and “The Intermediates” (2015–). Made of plastic twine, The “Intermediates” allude to weaving crafts practiced by agricultural societies, while Sonic Sculptures, are made with metal bells. When activated, these sculptures produce a subtle rattling soundscape, in an allusion to ancient rituals. Also included in “Cenote Observatory is Non- Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Orange” (2018), the counterpart to “Non- Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Blue” (2018), which is at the foot of the stairs. Both sculptures are part of Yang’s series” Non-Indépliables, nue” (2010–), in which the ready-made drying rack is adorned with electrical cords, light bulbs, and other objects, such as pill boxes. Spanning nearly a decade, the group of 20 sculptures is set in front of wallpaper suggestive of an opening to an infinite vista that transforms the white cube gallery into a cave-like portal to another world.

Photo: Installation view of “Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields”, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas. February 1–April 27, 2025. Photo by Kevin Todora, courtesy of the artist and Nasher Sculpture Center

Info: Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora St, Dallas, TX, USA, Duration: 1/2-27/4/2025, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.nashersculpturecenter.org/