Haegue Yang's First Major French Exhibition at Strasbourg's MAMCS

Haegue Yang's first major solo exhibition in France, titled "Équivoques," runs from June 8 to September 15, 2013, at the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg (MAMCS). The show is split between the Aubette, a building designed by Theo van Doesburg, Jean Arp, and Sophie Taeuber, and the museum's graphic arts cabinet, transformed into a neon-lit "white parallelepiped." Yang presents mobile sculptures meant to be experienced like costumes, alongside two-dimensional forms referencing avant-garde legacies. Custom-cut Venetian blinds structure both open and closed sculptures, creating shifting perspectives. Despite appearances, the works avoid surrealism, minimalism, or op art. Yang's practice is informed by her life across three countries, friendship, and a long process of intimate engagement with objects. Her collages, photographs, and lacquered dust-catching canvases reflect a thinking shaped by Edward Said's concept of exile as aesthetics, displacing the here and now. The exhibition seeks a synthesis between rationality and shamanism, aiming to let viewers experience freedom within the equivocation of a material life regaining a soul.