PORTO.- Haegue Yang (b. Seoul, South Korea, 1971) is the artist invited for the next Sonae|Serralves Commission for the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, in Porto, Portugal. Once more in this programme an artist is invited to create new work. In the present edition the work will be in close connection with the distinctive architectural and natural context of Serralves, as happened in 2014 with Cold Shoulder, by Iranian artist Nairy Baghramian.

The Sonae|Serralves Commission aims to promote culture and bring art closer to the community. The Commission, which is the only one of its kind in Portugal, also introduces for the first time the work of the internationally acclaimed Haegue Yang to the Portuguese public.

Suzanne Cotter, Director of Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art has said: “The poetic expression of contemporary cultural states present in the work of Haegue Yang combined with her ability to create works on an ambitious scale that speak to us across time and place, makes for a compelling choice for the Sonae|Serralves Commission. The commission constitutes an important milestone in the artist´s practice, and its installation in the grounds of Serralves will expand the public´s experience of what and how artists can intervene into the environment of our everyday.”

Catarina Oliveira Fernandes, Director of Communication, Brand and Social responsibility of Sonae, states: “Sonae aims to promote the social and cultural wellbeing of the communities in which it operates, and has been encouraging, through the years, the development of knowledge and culture. The current edition of Sonae|Serralves Commission is a successful example of this mindset, as it allows to present to the Portuguese audiences national and international artists of great value. This Commission also promotes an approach to the university students in Portugal, namely trough the involvement of art students in the work process of Haegue Yang and trough open sessions of the artist in four Portuguese Universities”.

Context and site are fundamental aspects of Yang´s works. The artist has created major large-scale works for the Korean Pavilion of the 53rd Venice Biennial in 2009, the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul. Recent large-scale commissioned works include her vast, kinetic installation, Approaching: Choreography Engineered in Never-Past Tense
installed in the former Hauptbahnhof in Kassel Germany for Documenta 13 in 2012, and An Opaque Wind, her commissioned outdoor sculptural intervention produced in 2015 for the 12th Sharjah Biennial in the Emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

Haegue Yang is one of the most prominent artists of her generation. Her sculptural language of assemblage, comprising standard household objects and materials, such as venetian blinds, laundry racks, decorative lights, infrared heaters, scent emitters, and industrial fans, has been used to create spectacular floating environments and installations populated by totemic figures, often conceived as a choreography of movement in which both sculptures and viewers are active participants. Yang´s complex and nuanced installations are characterized by sensory experiences of touch, sound, taste and sight, that evoke states of impermanence and mobility between space and cultures. While the philosophy of Buddhism and oriental ritual informs her work, in recent years Yang has looked to the canon of western modernism in art, dance and costume design, from Igor Stravinksy´s The Rite of Spring of 1908, and The Triadic Ballet of 1922, designed by Bauhaus teacher Oskar Schlemmer, to the decorative schemes designed by Sophie Taeuber-Arp with Hans Arp and Leo Van Doesburg afor the Salle Des Fetes and Foyer Bar Aubette in Strasbourg in 1928 for which the artist conceived a series of ´wearable sculptures´.

Born in South Korea in 1971, Haegue Yang completed her Fine Art studies in Seoul and at the prestigious Staedelschule in Frankfurt. Exhibitions of her work have been shown at the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015), MoMA, New York (2015), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015), the Bergen Kunsthalle, Bergen (2013), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg (2013), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012), Tate Modern (2012), the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2011), Arnolfini, Bristol (2011), the New Museum, New York (2010), and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2009). In 2009, Haegue Yang represented South Korea in the 53rd Venice Biennale. In 2012, the artist participated in the Documenta 13, Kassel. In 2015, she was Artist in Residence at Atelier Calder, in Saché, France. Haegue Yang lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Seoul, Korea and is Professor of Fine Art at the Malmö Art Academy in Sweden.