Rebuilding Beirut with Pride

My work develops in response to my cultural identity and experience. As a person of mixed Singaporean and British heritage both my research and practice has come to engage with the colonial connotations of the relationship between the East and the West. These connotations are most evident in themes such as Orientalism and its relationship to Chinoiserie; an 18th century aesthetic trend in which elements of Chinese design were recreated in relation to European aesthetics and tastes. I attempt to re-imagine and reclaim ideas and designs associated with the Chinoiserie, which have in the past had problematic colonial undertones. Cultural designs are shared as opposed to appropriated, it is no longer about one culture being moulded to the demands of another. I produce furniture-like structures that are ornamental but also functional. My sculptures are usually flat-packable and when assembled are often anthropomorphic in stature and shape. These objects are culturally coded, they reference an aesthetic trend that saw the appropriation of Chinese design as a result of Britain's colonial conquests however they are also playful and peculiar, their creature-like bodies depict them as having a life of their own.

Hannah Lim b.1998 is an artist based in South West London, she graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a in Sculpture in 2020 and is set to begin her MFA at The University of Oxford in October 2021. At the end of her degree she was awarded the RSA John Kinross Scholarship allowing her to travel on a research trip to Florence. She has recently shown work as part of Wretched Light Industry, a project supported by Creative Scotland and Serving The People NY, was part of the duo show, Porta Sancta , with artist Hugo Harris in association with Underground Flower and Harlesden High Street and was recently selected for HOME x Cob Gallery’s inaugural residency which culminated in a duo show, Parts of Self, with Courtenay Welcome. She has been selected for the RSA New Contemporaries 2022 and Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021.

www.hannah-lim.co.uk
@hannahlim