"Cultural designs are shared as opposed to appropriated within my work.”
Hannah Lim (b. 1998, London, England) is a British-Singaporean artist whose multi-disciplinary practice explores the intersections of mixed heritage, cultural hybridity, and colonial legacies. Drawing on her dual heritage background, Lim creates intricately designed works that reflect on identity, ornamentation, and the enduring impact of colonial visual culture. Her sculptures, often taking the form of ornate snuff bottles, altarpieces, and fantastical, furniture-like structures, blend the folkloric and the supernatural.
Inspired by Chinese mythological texts such as The Classics of Mountains, a bestiary, and Seasand Pu Songling’s Tales of a Chinese Studio, which contain enchanted objects, Lim’s works are animated by playful anthropomorphic features, arms, legs, and expressive faces, that imbue them with a sense of life. Central to Lim’s practice is her critical engagement with Chinoiserie, an 18th-century European aesthetic that romanticized East Asian design through stylized depictions of nature and leisure. By reclaiming and reinterpreting this style, Lim challenges the exoticization embedded within it, while proposing new, culturally resonant narratives that center identity-searching. Her work repositions the style as a site for shared cultural dialogue and creative reimagination. Lim’s sculptures are often both ornamental and functional, referencing decorative arts and furniture traditions while remaining deeply personal. Recurring symbols, such as her grandmother’s jade necklace, anchor the work in familial memory and diasporic identity, while connecting to broader conversations about colonial histories, aesthetics, and cultural transmission.
Hannah Lim earned her BA in Sculpture from the University of Edinburgh and completed an MFA at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. She lives and works in London. Lim’s work has been exhibited widely in solo and group presentations across the UK and internationally, including shows at Huxley-Parlour, London; Wilder Gallery, London; Pangolin London; BeAdvisors, Milan; and Dinner Gallery, New York. She has been commissioned for public art projects by institutions including the Young V&A, Greenwich Peninsula, and West Middlesex Hospital. Hannah Lim has been awarded the RSA John Kinross Scholarship and received artist residencies with Hospitalfield and Pangolin London.