Haegue Yang (Seoul, 1971) seeks to communicate without language in a primordial and visual way: often complementing her vocabulary of visual abstraction with sensory experiences that include scent, sound, light and tactility. Combining industrial fabrication and folk craftsmanship, Yang explores the affective power of materials in destabilizing the distinction between the modern and pre-modern. Yang’s unique visual language extends across various media (from paper collage to staged theatre pieces and performative sculptures), and materials (Venetian blinds, clothing racks, synthetic straw, bells and graph paper) that are torn, lacquered, woven, lit and hung. Her artistic explorations stem from material-based concerns, accompanied by philosophical, political and emotionally charged readings of historical events and figures. Her ongoing research is empowered by underlying references to art history, literature and political history, through which she reinterprets some of her recurrent themes: migration, postcolonial diasporas, enforced exile and social mobility. As a result, these pieces link various geopolitical contexts and histories in an attempt to understand and comment on our own time. Yang’s translation from the political and historical into the formal and abstract, demonstrates her conviction that historical narratives can be made comprehensible without being linguistically explanatory or didactic.