The Artist Of Nowhere

Haegue Yang’s complex reflections on modern loneliness have done nothing less than create a new mould: The truly global artist who gains her sense of self from being permanently out of place.

- Zoe Lescaze

When the artist Haegue Yang shows old artworks in new places, she likes to create a fresh piece that links the exhibition to the local context. For her current presentation at the Bass, a museum in Miami Beach, Yang asked the curators what the region’s famously multicultural residents have in common. A particular holiday? A certain food? Not really, they told her. “But isn’t there any commonality you can think of?” she asked. The curators looked at one another. “Hurricanes,” they said, half-joking.

The notion of violent storms as a binding force fascinated the 48-year-old South Korean artist, whose sculptures, room-size environments and videos often address themes of individual and national identity, displacement, isolation and community. After months of meteorological research, Yang produced a new work for the Bass show: “Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity,” a chaotic floor-to-ceiling digital collage swirling with storm-tracking symbols, satellite photos of Floridian McMansions, distorted palm trees and sinister gyres that cover vast swathes of the museum-like dystopian wallpaper. The show is called “In the Cone of Uncertainty,” which in forecasting terms refers to hurricane projection but might as well be a description of Yang’s overall philosophy.