Meet: Mickey Yang

The multimedia installations Mickey creates include objects, videos and performances. "I have a background in graphic design, which is reflected in the way I try to shape images or language to my own liking. When I was at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, with the intention of becoming a painter, I had to write about the visual arts. This evoked all kinds of emotions in me, from anger to infatuation to amazement. It kept fascinating me and eventually I decided to take that path." And with success. Last year, she presented her first museum solo exhibition Upaya in The Hague. It was actually planned for the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, but due to the Covid-19 lockdown it was never on public display, despite being fully built up.

Mickey describes her work as approachable, layered and ever-evolving. "I am always looking for the next step. My installations change with me. For a period, I was inspired by mimicry, the phenomenon of surviving by adapting to the environment. A camouflage technique from nature. But my more recent projects are more in line with my search for my Asian roots. For instance, you can see elements of Chinese writing in them, not in a frivolous way, but with heavy forging."  She collaborated with a forge in The Hague to give old crafts a modern twist, resulting in graphic lines in forged metal.

The Eindhoven native lives and works in The Hague. In 2020-2021, she was artist in residence at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Although she is not from the region herself, she finds Limburg a pleasant place to be at work. "The collaboration with people from the south is often a bit more congenial and friendly. I noticed this especially during the preparations for my project for Jan van Eyck Open Studios, but also during the nice cooperation with Marres in Maastricht. Here I was one of the jury members for the Limburg Biennale, which was on show until 14 August 2022."

For the exhibition at SCHUNCK, Mickey will have half of the showcase at her disposal. "In it, I especially want to play with the fact that it is originally a shop window: I'm going to expose the process of an installation by showing the separate elements. What if you change them, what does that do to a work? Besides making-of videos, the video of the Upaya exhibition at Kunsthalle Osnabrueck will also be shown. It will really be a look before and behind the scenes."