Hannah Lim’s work responds to her cultural identity and experience. As a person of mixed Singaporean and British heritage both her 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. Lim attempts 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.
Hannah Lim, Shards of Fire. Image Courtesy of the artist. 
Hannah Lim, What’s Caught The Tiger’s Eye? (2022). Image Courtesy of the artist.
Hannah Lim, Tiger Tower (2022). Image Courtesy of the artist. 
Hannah Lim, Eight Eyed Rainbow Fish Snuff Bottle (2022). Image Courtesy of the artist. 
Installation view: Shards of Fire, solo exhibition with BeAdvisors, at 9 French Place, London, May 2023. Image Courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Hannah Lim, Shards of Fire. Image Courtesy of the artist. 
Hannah Lim, Orchid Table (2024). Image credit: Steve Russell Studio.