Haegue Yang's 'Lethal Love' at Cubitt Gallery explores community through abstract portraits

Haegue Yang's installation 'Lethal Love' (2008) at London's Cubitt Gallery examines the tension between public personas and private lives through abstract portraiture. The work focuses on German activist Petra Kelly, co-founder of Germany's Green Party, who was killed by her partner Gert Bastian in 1993. Yang creates an environment using metallic blinds, mirrors, spotlights, and scent dispensers emitting gunpowder and floral aromas. This installation continues Yang's exploration of counter-monumentality, building on earlier works like 'Series of Vulnerable Arrangements' (2006) and 'Mountains of Encounter' (2007). The artist's practice often involves salvaging transitory moments from urban life, as seen in her 2003 Paris sculpture 'Accidental Monument' that appeared in the Quartier de l'Horloge. Yang's work frequently employs everyday objects to suggest alternative modes of communication, demonstrated in pieces like 'Illiterate Leftovers' (2004) with fax paper traces and 'Traces of anonymous pupil authors' (2001) examining student notations. The installation creates what Binna Choi and Yang describe as a 'community of absence' in their 2006 conversation published by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst. Yang's approach resonates with Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophical inquiries about community in 'The Inoperative Community' (1991), exploring how fragmented existences find meaning through shared social spaces.