Haegue Yang

An Opaque Wind documents a site-specific installation of the same title commissioned by and exhibited at Sharjah Biennial 2015.

An Opaque Wind (2015) took the intertwined geo-economic involvement of the Korean state-driven economy in the Gulf region since the 1970s as a starting point. It reflects upon the progress-driven heavy industrialization that has engaged many Korean workers (mostly male) to construct the urban and oil infrastructure that constitutes today’s ecology in both territories. Composed of seemingly unrelated common construction materials, such as rusting beams, used air conditioners, turbine vents, bricks, concrete blocks, and corrugated metal sheets, combined with other locally sourced traditional elements from the site, like areesh roof and mats, and coral stones, the installation oscillates between transparency and opacity, openness and impenetrability, past and present, suggesting a commonly shared past of the geo-economic trajectory of industrialization juxtaposed with layers of reconstruction of Sharjah’s early settlement as situated within the heritage village. What is striking is the use of industrial vents to visualize the immaterial element of the piece, namely wind. This element is also found in Sharjah’s traditional wind towers as natural cooling systems in buildings, and wind is also an invisible metaphor for a hidden tie between the history and regions that remain remote and exotic to each other.

The publication, An Opaque Wind documents every aspect of this temporary installation, including outdoor sculptures, as well as an interior space with carefully chosen elements, such as local papers in the language of immigrants and a satellite-feed of Korean broadcast tracing diasporic communities. An Opaque Wind includes an essay by Eungie Joo, the script for the audio track of Doubles and Halves – Events with Name less Neighbors (2009), and a short text by the artist in English and Arabic. It is published by Sharjah Art Foundation and Wiens Verlag with the support of Galerie Chantal Crousel.

Cat. Engl. /Arab.
Sharjah Art Foundation, 2016.
Design Studio Manuel Raeder.
Essay by Eungie Joo and Text by Haegue Yang.
144 pages
22,5 x 17 cm
Sharjah, Berlin 2016