Untitled (Box Series)

Kim’s work speaks to the technological and post-postmodern hybridity that has accompanied the developing role of technology in art, culture and society in the past decade and simultaneously, the relationship between the artist and the machine. Although following templates created by computers, the complex geometries of process are left open to the weaknesses of the human hand—the frailty of hand-assemblage.

In Untitled (2009), the boxes exist in a constant state of flux—designed by computer, crafted by hand, destined to move via sensors, and consequently, to crank, sound and function as machines, but innately emulating organic matter—whether that be the rippling vestiges of sea anemones or the hair of human skin. The quest for synthetic systems is always undermined by the desire for the product to look, feel and move like us. In the same way, Hana Kim’s needle boxes are both sensual and mechanical; they scream unheimlich.

Ashley Vaughan, excerpted from Hybrid Visions : Craft, Process and Tactile Flux