“Ornament is a force that unites and transforms conflicting worldly elements … discloses cycles and tends to be located in the margin between different kinds of things…” Kent Bloomer: Nature as Ornament
Responding to the intimate architecture of Commonage’s basement project space, Hannah Lim invites us to uncover an installation that plays in the margins of both hidden and fantastical narratives, imbued with mythological and autobiographical symbols. Lim reclaims and reimagines design elements associated with Orientalism and the complicated European aesthetic trend to assimilate South East Asian motifs, aesthetics and styling. She makes reference to these colonial connotations and her cultural heritage through a contemporary lens, a knowing palate and intricate craft. These works have monstrous, anthropomorphic and metaphorical qualities that are a hybrid of both the functional and ornamental