Since its inception in the late 1990s, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (YHCHI) has developed a distinctive style that engages with cultural identity, material inequalities, (police) violence, the confluence of fact and fiction, and geopolitical realities, including the division of Korea. The art duo’s creations are characterized by a high degree of abstraction that has also become a defining feature. YHCHI conveys its wide-ranging themes and interests almost exclusively using black text on a white background. The text is synchronized to music that is often self-composed, unfolding sentence by sentence, word by word, or letter by letter. THIS IS NOT A JOKE (2010) is YHCHI’s only work on paper and features their distinctive visual language. Furthermore, the video work PASSAGE -- OR, THE FRAGILITY OF THE MOMENT (ON READING THE OPENING OF CHRIS MARKER’S MOVIE SCRIPT, SANS SOLEIL) (2023) is also part of the n.b.k. Editions collection.

YHCHI’s works have been translated into 26 languages. In 2012, the duo was named Creative Arts Fellows at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. In 2018, YHCHI’s extensive archive, encompassing past and future work (YHCHANG.COM/AP2: THE COMPLETE WORKS), was acquired by the museum M+ in Hong Kong. In 2020, YHCHI delivered the Renato Poggioli Lecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. M+ commissioned the duo in 2021 to produce the expansive work CRUCIFIED TVS for the museum’s opening that same year. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at venues including Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2022); Tate Modern, London (on- and offline, 2021); Kadist, San Francisco (2013); New Museum, New York (2007); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2007).