Painter Paul Klee once famously said ‘A drawing is a line going for a walk’. In Trisha Kim’s hands, that line doesn’t merely wander – it drifts, spirals, doubles back on itself, led not by intention but instinct. Drawing with her non-dominant left hand, Kim deliberately bypasses learned technique, surrendering control so that her subconscious can guide the gesture. The result is a kind of visual automatic writing – lines that meander freely, unburdened by conscious design, until something takes shape from the chaos.
This ensures complete freedom for her unconscious mind to take her hands in any direction. Only when the free drawing is complete does she awaken her conscious mind to find objects and figures within the original drawing, so the final work melds her conscious and subconscious minds. She states: “The resulting artworks exist in a state of duality: half-revealed, half-concealed, existing on the edge of recognition”.
Some works remain ambiguous; maybe we see something that Trisha doesn’t and vice versa. Others become more figurative, such as a disguised angel and bishop sitting under a tree. They don’t quite look human, as if they are creatures in disguise or figures out of a Leonora Carrington painting.
In another work, a figure crouches half-nude, holding on to a phallic object that we can’t quite make out. What makes the scene more disturbing and voyeuristic is a spectral figure watching over the subject – are its intentions sinister, or more noble?
While her works often contain disturbing imagery, they also play on our fears and taboos to present scenes that may enter our thoughts but will never be realised in the waking world.
Trisha Kim invites us into the deeper folds of the psyche – hers and ours. Through her drawings and figures, we become intruders and confidants, voyeurs in a world of intuition, shadow, and truths out of reach.
More about Trisha Kim’s art and practice may be found on her Instagram.
