Artist Haena Yoo ©Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles
In the
fall issue of the renowned monthly art magazine Art in
America, founded in 1913, Korean artist Haena Yoo, born in the 1990s,
was featured in the "New Talent".
Art
in America has been showcasing 20 notable emerging artists each year
in its "New Talent" issue since 1954. This issue was discontinued in
1966 but was revived in 2021. Among the 20 artists selected for this year's
"New Talent" are Haena Yoo, Stephanie Temma Hier, Eric Oglander, and
Pedro Zylbersztajn, among others.
Haena Yoo, I
was the placebo, 2023 ©Haena YooHaena Yoo (b. 1990) is a
multidisciplinary artist who works between Seoul and Los Angeles. Yoo explores
themes of labor, identity, and global capitalism by making installations
constructed with found materials, video, sound, food, fermentation, and smell.
Her recent works have taken the form
of blown glass orbs, such as I was the placebo (2023), which
contains organic materials like turkey tail mushrooms and hwanggi (a medicinal
root) soaked in liquid, trapped again between the forces of preservation and
decay.
Installation view
of “The Oriental Sauce Factory” at Gallery Shilla in 2022 ©Gallery ShillaHer work, composed of both material and immaterial elements, has focused on the ambivalent emotions of anxiety and desire that modern individuals experience within the invisible forces and structures inherent in social systems. For instance, in her solo exhibition “The Oriental Sauce Factory” at Gallery Shilla in 2022, Yoo expanded her ongoing exploration of scent, liquid, and fermentation to investigate the structures of neo-liberal markets and the otherness within them.
