Hanna Shim

INFO

Name	Hanna Shim (she/her)
Also known as	심한나
Born	1990
Country of Birth	South Korea
Place of Residence	Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Ethnicities	Korean
Dealer Gallery	Whitespace
Artform	Visual arts
Decades Active	2010s, 2020s

ABOUT

Hanna Shim is a Korean New Zealand artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau whose craft-based practice draws on the process of play. Known for her textile sculptures, the primacy of the handmade, with its connection to childhood and wonder, are recurring threads running throughout Shim’s varied practice.

Shim’s work has most recently taken the form of large-scale soft sculpture — objects made using pliable materials such as cloth. In the past, Shim was drawn to materials like watercolour paint and clay for their availability and ability to immediately convey an idea. Regarding her earlier work she says, “I used to play with accessible and traditional art mediums such as clay and pencil drawing – which can instantly depict the rawer form of thoughts and ideas with my bare hands.”

Whilst seemingly cute and playful, there is a knowing sense of contradiction in much of Shim’s work. Writing about her 2016 exhibition Headless, Shim articulates this dichotomy in her practice:

My work contains a lack of identity and ambivalent characteristics, and it suggests the in-between status of kitsch and art, cute and cruel. It is to create a space between laughter and discomfort where the viewer’s discomfort can also make them laugh, and viewers become confused about the mixed feelings. I think that is what makes some of the best art.

Commissioned to create work for the 2018 Satellites project The Claw, Shim made 100 wide-eyed soft toys for a giant arcade game occupying an empty shop in Northcote Town Centre. Created in collaboration with Micheal McCabe, Adam Ben-Dror and Amelia Murray (Fazerdaze), The Claw was a joyful and enlivening project for passersby to enjoy amid ongoing intensification and redevelopment in the suburb.

In 2021, a prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty spread throughout Aotearoa due to COVID-19 restrictions and Shim’s exhibition at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space in Pōneke was rescheduled due to an extended lockdown. Within this context Wishing you well (2022) appeared as an antidote to widespread feelings of anxiety, when it was finally able to open. With an installation reminiscent of a child-like tableau, Shim created a carefree sense of wonder in a space where such gestures are not usually expected. Pliable flowers and ladybugs surrounded a four-metre-long reclining naked female figure lying serenely on a hand-tufted ‘grass’ carpet, which viewers were invited to lie with at the opening. At once playful and earnest, Shim’s gentle subversions of the white-walled gallery space elicit questions around motherhood and our relationship to Mother Nature.

In 2024, Shim presented a solo exhibition at The Dowse, Pillow Garden, a sprawling installation featuring plant-inspired soft sculptures set to a soundscape by composer Seung Yeon Park blending traditional Korean instruments and sounds from Totara Park in Tāmaki Makaurau, situated near her studio. "I want to create a welcoming space where people can feel soft again—where they can laugh, be silly, feel safe, free, and truly happy. It’s something our world really needs right now." Shim said of the exhibition. "For me, this work challenges those hard boundaries we often encounter – between hard and soft, art and craft, adulthood and childhood, or even dominance and marginality. I’m always looking for a space where these contrasts can coexist peacefully, a personal vision of Utopia"

Shim received her master's from the University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts, in 2016. Shim has exhibited widely throughout Aotearoa and in 2022 was commissioned to create work for Heart of the City. In 2019, her Anti Anti Asian mask was acquired by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.