The graphic featured on Haegue Yang’s bag is based on
Eclectic Totemic – wallpaper created in collaboration with designers OK-RM (Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath) for her solo show at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, in 2013. Developed through the surrealist principle of
Exquisite Corpse, geometric composites were comprised of fragmentary portraits of individuals who have informed Haegue’s work. With the face of Romain Gary and the chin of George Orwell, this totem references two literary works in which elephants are symbols for an exploration of human morality – Orwell’s 1936 essay ‘Shooting an Elephant’ and Gary’s 1956 novel
The Roots of Heaven. Haegue formed a part of Latitudes’s
exhibition Sequelism Part 3 (2009). Furthermore, Max Andrews of Latitudes has written on her work for catalogues including
Symmetric Inequality, Sala Rekalde;
Life on Mars 55th Carnegie International; and
Sense & Sustainability, Urdaibai Arte.