NADA Miami 2024

Woo Hannah expands her artistic universe by summoning spontaneously generated and perpetually transforming creatures. Through her sculptures and installations, she disrupts hierarchical categorizations among entities, intersecting them diagonally or curvilinearly to blur distinctions. Her works often depict a dynamic structure where environments become entities, and entities transform back into environments in a constant cycle of inversion.
Recently, Woo has broadened her focus to explore the relationships between these creatures. She delves into the intersections and horizontal states of relationships—cooperation and hostility, guardianship and destruction—while centering on the foundational and archetypal bond between mother and child, a relationship defined by protection and dependence. Her work examines the fluidity of roles and positions through scenarios like predator-prey substitutions or hunters disguised as prey, revealing that no role is fixed or absolute. Moreover, she reflects on the reversal and transformation of relationships over time, where the protector becomes the protected, capturing the essence of ever-evolving dynamics in her practice.
Her 2024 work Twins originates from the relationship between twins who share the same genetic makeup yet develop distinct identities as they grow. It reflects the fateful connection that can neither be entirely different nor completely the same, grounded in biological realities. Extending from the Bleeding series—which draws inspiration from the morphological and attributive similarities between withering orchids and female reproductive organs to explore themes of femininity, aging, and gravity—this work serves as an expanded contemplation of relationships.
In the process of questioning whether the entities within the series could be regarded as a family or as a legacy spanning generations, Woo completed the first piece in Twins. This led to the creation of another work that is nearly identical yet distinctly different, resulting in two interconnected entities. The second form was crafted based on the pattern of the first body, yet it diverges in proportions and structure. Together, the two forms, sharing a common foundation but possessing independent identities, evoke an image of standing as one. This portrayal recalls the twin relationship—living separate lives yet remaining perpetually connected.