Haegue Yang is the subject of a solo exhibition titled Haegue Yang: Handles in the Marron Atrium at The Museum of Modern Art (hereafter MoMA) through April 12, 2020. For the opening of the museum’s expanded campus on October 21, 2019, MoMA had commissioned an installation by Yang for the Marron Atrium, the biggest exhibition space within MoMA. Haegue Yang: Handles features six dynamic sculptures, wall designs based on dazzling geometries, and the play of light and sound to create a complex environment.

As handles are points of attachment and material catalysts for movement and change, Yang considers this everyday interface between people and things. The red steel grab bars are mounted on the walls amid the dazzling hologram and the iridescent pattern of a panoramic collage. While the bars on the walls don’t work as handles, the handles attached to the six sculptures can be put to functional use, moving the works about within the space. Covered in skins of bells, these monumental works come in distinctive shapes: two of the sculptures are inspired by the work of the Swiss painter, dancer, architect, and educator Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s small sculptures titled Coupe Dada, another sculpture refers to the enneagram of the mystic philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff, and the three remaining sculptures use open-source designs for door handles. Mounted on casters, the sculptures generate a subtle rattling sound when maneuvered by performers at regular intervals, and recall the use of bells in shamanistic rites, among other sources, while the haptic and auditory qualities of Yang’s Sonic Sculptures animate their imposing physicality. The chorus of bells also suggests ideas of resonance, championing more diverse social and political models while the patterns of movement in the installation echo Yang’s ongoing investigation into concerns of migration. 

Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance, explains, “Haegue Yang has built a distinguished career on her singular ability to synthesize a rich array of cultural references across time periods and geographies into sculptural and sensorial installations. Her ambitious commission for MoMA presents an immersive, prismatic environment through which a diverse set of histories and forms is transformed into an exciting new vocabulary of mobile sonic sculptures that animate the space as much as they do a more open notion of history.”