Upon entering, museum visitors will find a group of suspended sculptures taking inspiration from centuries-old kite-making traditions titled Airborne Paper Creatures – Triple Synecology (2025). The three sculptural groups build upon the artist’s recent paper and bamboo kite series, Spring Sailors – Six Synecologies Aloft, which debuted in late 2024 for Lahore Biennale 03. Though emerging from similar points of reference, the kites at the Nasher take on greater physicality through the use of CNC laser-cut birch plywood to compose the flat, primary body. Airborne Paper Creatures are then skinned with cut-mulberry or marbled paper embellishments, and adorned further with diverse beads, Punjabi goat bells, and, in some cases, parandy—traditional Punjabi hair ornaments made of multicolored silk threads and ornamental tassels.??
Airborne Paper Creatures take flight as abstracted forms of fauna named for the actions they take: flutterers (birds), swimmers (marine life), and crawlers (insects). The secondary title for the series, Triple Synecology, refers to the study of interactions between species that share a habitat. As installed in this transitional space of the building—just beyond the entrance and ahead of the threshold to the garden—Airborne Paper Creatures call attention to the felt and heard environment. Currents of airflow prompted by the continual movement taking place just beneath the kites trigger subtle motion and the resonating sound of the bells.?
In the adjacent gallery, Yang’s Mignon Votives (2025) signal a shift in the artist’s sculptural production with two groups of diminutive sculptures emerging from a natural environment of moss and river rock. The broad horizontal plane of the installation suggests an interior landscape evocative of Bogil Island’s pebble stone beaches and the Buyongdong gardens designed by the poet Yun Seon-do (1587–1671) during his exile to the southernmost tip of the Korean Peninsula.?
On one half of the gallery, Mignon Votives – Seedpod Statues (2025) arise from the moss-covered ground. Comprising pinecones supported by bases of branches, roots, or driftwood, Seedpod Statues are intricately embellished with a mélange of organic and inorganic materials, such as artificial plants, feathers, bells, synthetic hair, dried spices, beads, pill capsules, q-tips, cotton blossoms, and other everyday objects. Reminiscent of bonsai, the miniature-scaled Seedpod Statues suggest a sculptural evolution of the pinecones, resulting in hybrid forms that are at once natural and alien.??
On the other half of the gallery Mignon Votives – Pebble Parades (2025), small cairns of synthetic stones, emerge from a river rock terrain and echo the universal ritual of stone stacking as an act of prayer for good fortune with simple offerings like bills sandwiched in between the layers of stones. The selection of facsimile banknotes here reflects the artist’s focus on the wide variety of fauna typically found on paper currency, rather than the conventional motifs of human figures, like royalty or politicians. In the midst of the field of river rock, Pebble Parades boast colorful imagery of such majestic creatures as elephants, rhinoceroses, llamas, and other wildlife as a form of heraldry. Together, the wish towers of stones and paper bills conflate monetary systems with the natural world to imply an arcane transactional tradition between culture and nature.??
In the garden by the cafe’s terrace, a woven black plastic twine sculpture titled The Intermediate – Six-Legged Carbonous Epiphyte Imoogi (2025) stretches its tentacle-like legs along a fountain wall. The imoogi, a snake-like mythological creature described in folklore as a “failed” giant dragon, is a recurring character in Yang’s ongoing series The Intermediates (2015–). This new iteration is both grounded and suspended and provides a dialogic link to related sculptures on view in the Nasher’s subterranean spaces.?
Beneath the museum’s stairs, a heterogenous threesome of sculptures transitions visitors from the light-filled, street-level galleries to the underground spaces of the Nasher’s Lower Level. Along the wall, Rotating Reflective Running Blade-Handle Faucets Identical Twins – Black Circles #24 (2023) is flanked by the new sculpture Radial Tousled Epiphyte (2025)—Yang’s first relief to incorporate paper flowers and the initial use of marbled paper in the artist’s works. The title describes its radial shape, as well as the role its paper flowers play as non-parasitic plants (epiphytes) growing on a butterfly-shaped creature. Radial Tousled Epiphyte is a continuation of Yang’s paper flower-making, which initially manifested as pagoda lanterns, with abundant ornamentations referencing Buddhist or shamanistic ritual objects.?
Both wall-mounted sculptures are backed by a black and white vinyl that plays with viewers’ perception and illusion. With its abstract, shifting patterns, the wall treatment suggests movement that becomes actualized through the Rotating Reflective Running Blade-Handle Faucets Identical Twins sculpture, whose mirroring circular elements spin when activated. When spinning, the faucets and water hoses begin to rotate, yet the mirrored image of the viewer remains still. For the artist, the artwork’s rotation refers to the intensity of movement without any change in location, suggesting an “unlearning” of many preconceptions about motion. The black water hoses transform into a pair of perfect circles when the sculpture is activated, revealing another leitmotif of Yang’s work: the twinning or pairing of objects, materials, or themes. This is further referenced through the inclusion of the artist’s Non-Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Blue (2018) in the context of this installation here under the landing, while its counterpart, Non-Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Orange (2018) appears across the museum’s lower level.?
Nearby, in the Nasher’s subterranean vestibuled gallery, is Yang’s dimly lit Cenote Observatory, a dense and immersive survey of anthropomorphic sculptures created between 2016 and 2025. At the center of the installation is Umbra Creatures by Rockhole (2017–18), a seven-part sculptural ensemble either suspended or standing freely on casters that boast voluminous and tentacled bodies replete with bushy, hairy, metallic, and woven surfaces. Umbra Creatures by Rockhole bridges two series also in Cenote Observatory: Sonic Sculptures (2013–) and The Intermediates. Made of plastic twine, The Intermediates allude to weaving crafts practiced by agricultural societies, while Sonic Sculptures, are made with metal bells. When activated, these sculptures produce a subtle rattling soundscape, in an allusion to ancient rituals. Also included in Cenote Observatory is Non-Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Orange, the counterpart to Non-Indépliable, nue – Strive and Stake Blue, which is on view under the landing of the Lower Level. Both sculptures are part of Yang’s series Non-Indépliables, nue (2010–), in which the ready-made drying rack is adorned with electrical cords, light bulbs, and other objects, such as pill boxes. Spanning nearly a decade of the artist’s career, the group of 20 sculptures is set in front of wallpaper that suggests an opening to an infinite vista, transforming the white cube gallery into a cave-like portal to another world.
Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields is made possible by support provided by Howard and Cindy Rachofsky and the Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District (DTPID).??
About Haegue Yang
Haegue Yang was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1971. Since the mid-1990s, Yang has lived and worked in Seoul and Berlin and currently teaches at her alma mater, the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her immersive multimedia environments combine diverse materials and cultural traditions with references ranging from scientific phenomena and sociopolitical narratives to art history. Her dual or hybrid materiality of a range of industrial objects and intensive, craft-based techniques, leads to unexpected connections between divergent worlds of contemporary mass production, ancient civilizations and natural phenomena.
Yang actively exhibits at the international biennales while her work is represented in prominent institutional and private collections all over the world, including the Guggenheim New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, to name a few. A prolific artist, Yang has been the subject of many solo shows and projects at the aforementioned institutions and others, including the New Museum, New York (2010); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2018); SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2022); Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2023); and S.M.A.K., Ghent (2023). The Hayward Gallery, London is currently presenting a survey of Yang’s work over the last three decades.
Her work has also featured in numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2009), dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012), the Taipei Biennial (2014), Sharjah Biennial 12 (2015), Istanbul Biennial (2019) the Biennale of Sydney (2018), the Singapore Biennale (2022), and most recently the Lahore Biennale (2024).