Hyora Yang
About
Breath Variations (12 – 14 May) is a new body of work created by Irish artist Christopher Steenson for Flat Time House, the former studio-home of late British conceptual artist John Latham. Using sound, video, and transmission-based methodologies, Breath Variations will explore the materiality of time – its permanence and evanescence – and the power that attention has over its transmission and state of matter.
By manipulating and extending the sonic dimensions of Flat Time House, Steenson investigates the capacity of breath as a ‘least event’ – Latham’s term for the shortest departure from a state of nothingness – to punctuate linearities of time and space.
Artist: Christopher Steenson
MA curators: Thomas Cury, Cindy He, Salomé Jacques, Romy Lagesse, Napas Mangklatanakul, Ariana Martin, Liyin Wang, and Hyora Yang
Statement
Hyora Yang is a curator, researcher and artistic director. Her practice draws on curatorial hospitality that produces new relationships investigating the dynamics between artist/curator, private/public, hosting/guesting, and human/non-human. She is particularly interested in hosting practices to open collaborative spaces for learning, sharing, and producing knowledge in horizontal ways.
Using Nam June Paik’s idea that ‘art is not private property’ as the thesis motif, ‘Curatorial as Commons: The methodology of curatorial hospitality’ focuses on how commoning practices can produce common space, resources and knowledge. From inhabited space to museum space, these practices attempt to make a space that cohabits in various dynamics between private/public, guest/host and ownership/stewardship. To propose radical ways of curating as a form of social cooperation, the practice of commoning promotes mutual exchange, joyful gathering, open-ended discussion, and collective learning. Her research allows curatorial practice to expand the idea of commons as an open invitation to a democratic and process-oriented structure.
Hyora co-curated Breath Variations, a graduate project in partnership with Flat Time House. Breath Variations explores the materiality of time and pays attention to how matter flows and connects between ourselves and our surroundings. The project includes a residency programme, a solo exhibition by Northern Irish artist Christopher Steenson, and an in-conversation event with London-based geographer Sasha Engelmann. While deep diving into the archives of John Latham and the intentions of the Artist Placement Group (APG), Hyora discovered how the role of curation could support artist practices, ideas, and research.
Breath Variations
Museum Night
19 August–20 August 2022
Museum Night is a public programme that allows guests to stay in the exhibition space for 24 hours aiming to transform the normative exhibition format. Guests start check-in at 18:00, which is the general closing time of art institutions. It presents the artistic practice of the natural environment and invites the audience to a heterogeneous landscape composed by the artist.
Plantopia presents practice-based research on ecology and invites people to a heterogeneous landscape. Escaping from urban space, they envision a new environment with intuitive experience.
Sound camp
All participants gather to introduce themselves and discuss how they would like to change their way of appreciation in the exhibition space. In the late evening, they are invited into sound camp with the artistic practice of interpreting Mort Garson's music, Mother Earth's Plantasia (1976).
Green screening
Environmental-themed Sci-fi film, Silent running (1972) is screened in the exhibition space
Coffee house
The Coffee house, which functions similarly to a salon, welcomes guests to engage in dialogue while participating in a workshop. They make basil toast and melon cream soda following the artist’s recipes and eat together. Guests enjoy lively conversations as they reflect on their ideas and experiences from the past 24 hours.
Omni-present
Omni-present is a contemporary art collective co-led by curator Hyora Yang and artist Ahra Yang. They began their collaborative activities while studying at the Royal College of Art. The collective is interested in exploring artistic and curatorial ecologies as well as how art connects with our lives through creative ideas and intuitive experiences.
Based on collaborative research, Omni-present designed the project spaces as a transparent and reflective environment in Yeongheung Island, South Korea. Avoiding the construction of white cube walls, they use glass blocks to allow light to travel from air into the space from the outside. The glass brick walls present a potential connection between inside and outside, responding to the surrounding ecosystems. Also, they attempt to expand and mobilise their artistic and curatorial practices. Omni-present has converted the residential space into an art studio in Seoul, South Korea. The studio space serves as a site for art and curatorial laboratory, hosting exhibitions, public events, and residency programmes.
Project C [si:] Flow: A curated guide
Since 2020, her curatorial thinking has built on her curatorial research ‘Project C [si:] Flow: A curated guide’. Exploring ‘C’ refers to the verb 'see' and keywords beginning with the alphabet ‘c’. The act of seeing articulates the curatorial process, a way of building a network for mutual care and circulating collective knowledge and creative experience. And a series of ‘Cs’ (C for care, collaboration, conversation, commons, circulation etc) is an umbrella term for a variety of curatorial methodologies. Project C [si:] Flow: A curated guide aims to mediate and connect the relationships between artwork/world and ourselves/our surroundings, engaging creative collaboration.
