What are your favourite pieces in the exhibition?
I can never answer this question! There are just too many to name and I also feel that for an artist like Haegue Yang, with a practice that is extremely layered, diverse and multifaceted, it is important to consider the whole breadth rather than just focusing on one or two pieces. By presenting a selection of works from 1995 until now, I hope we have achieved the goal of showing the connections and evolution and processes of her works over the last three decades.
What are your top three can’t-miss pieces and why?
This is a big, expansive show but I really hope our visitors can see everything in the exhibition: and appreciate it in its entirety. Particularly given that the layout has been envisioned as a cohesive experience in which you are encouraged to discover the various links between different works and strands.
It reflects a thought process as well as a physical experience which mirrors Yang’s vision of traversing between cultures, traditions and histories, across time and space.
What are the top one or two pieces you’re personally most excited to show?
I am very excited about seeing her seminal works such as Storage Piece, Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Version Utrecht, Video Trilogy and 5, Rue Saint-Benoît again. One the other hand, I am equally excited about seeing, for the first time in person, all the new commissions and productions, including a large-scale immersive Venetian blind installation titled Star-Crossed Rendezvous After Yun.
What piece was the hardest to source for the exhibition and why?
All those things are always difficult when it comes to a large survey or a retrospective. How can we condense or confine an artist’s work, sometimes their life’s work, into one physical space?
So, for me, it’s not about this piece is more challenging to ship or that piece is more difficult to install. The hardest thing is always trying to articulate a physical narrative that the artist is happy with, and I can be proud of at the same time.