Soft, sewn sculptures by Hanna Shim 심한나 make space for elastic encounters within the rigid white walls of a gallery space. One of the artist’s goals in creating pliable art is to defeat the architecture that restrains and constrain the artist and their work from the wildness of making.

Here, domesticity can be felt as a form of purpose and of action–to make something soft and hand-spun is to make something felt, acutely touched by the body of organisms. Shim often works with materials and techniques that are seen as ‘feminine’; a word which denotes gentleness and playfulness but beyond that calls forth something deeply organic, amorphic, and ever-so-slightly sinister.

In Wishing you well, drawings and sculpted forms brush up against hard walls and screens to reveal an uncanny world within surfaces often overlooked as ‘homely’. Playful docility reveals shadows in opposite directions, and questions of motherhood and our relationship to Mother Nature linger in the cavities.