The Story of a Bear-Lady in a Sand Cave
2009
Text, A4, English, written by Haegue Yang, translated by Kyunghee Lee
Courtesy of the artist
The Story of a Bear-Lady in a Sand Cave
2009/2011
Audio, speakers, tripods, loop, voice-over: English, 20'30'' (Tsukasa Yamamoto);
French, 15'06'' (Marianne le Galliard), German, 13’19” (Jiyoung Kim)
Courtesy of the artist
Installation view of Family of Equivocations, Museé du Strasbourg and l’Aubette, Strasbourg, France, 2013
Photo: Mathieu Bertola, Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg
English, 20’30” (Tsukasa Yamamoto), 1'36" excerpt
French, 15’06” (Marianne le Galliard), 1'07" excerpt
German, 13’19” (Jiyoung Kim), 1'11" excerpt
Excerpt from exhibition guide of Double Soul, SMK – Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2022
One of the many doubles or pairs in this exhibition involves an animal-like woman – a bear-lady whom Yang made up by weaving two stories together. One part of the character hails from the novel The Woman in the Dunes by the Japanese author Kōbō Abe. In the novel, a young widow lives in a wooden house at the bottom of a sand pit, where she has to ceaselessly shovel sand out of the house to prevent it from being engulfed. The other is inspired by a mythical figure – a bear – who, according to Korean folklore, had to endure a long stay in a cave with a tiger and only with garlic and mugwort to eat. Only the one who could endure the hardship the longest would become hu- man. The tiger gave up after twenty days, while the bear persevered and was transformed into the woman who later became the mother of Korea’s first human king, Dangun.
In this audio work, the two women merge into a single character in a new story where this bear-lady lives in a dark cave with a tiger whom she does not know or have any contact with – yet still nurtures feelings for in her loneliness. She spends all day shovelling sand out of the cave to prevent it from being swallowed up by the dunes. The story becomes a kind of allegory of Sisyphean tasks in general, of trivial domestic repetitions and perhaps even of the working life of an artist. Despite little understanding from the community outside the cave, Yang’s bear-lady remains dedicated to her task, steadfastly struggling with the sand and ends up composing mesmerising sand waves as aesthetic signals right outside the cave.
Exhibition history
Double Soul, SMK – Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2022
ETA 1994-2018, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, 2018
Das Loch, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen, Germany, 2016
Family of Equivocations, Museé du Strasbourg and l’Aubette, Strasbourg, France, 2013
Inside Out and from the Ground Up, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, USA, 2012
Two Winters ,presentation with Kukje Gallery at the M Building, Miami, USA, 2011
D'un autre Monde, Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, France, 2011
Open Days, Le Consortium, Dijon, France, 2011
The Sea Wall: Haegue Yang with an Inclusion by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, 2011
Life: A Users Manual, Art Sheffield, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK, 2010
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