How I work: Henn Kim
The breathtakingly beautiful works of art by South Korean illustrator Henn Kim have made her an Instagram sensation and earned her orders from everyone from Unicef to Sally Rooney. Here she discusses the value of using creativity as emotional liberation
When she was 17, Henn Kim stopped talking. While she had always been a relatively shy child, the debilitating depression and sleeplessness of the South Korean-born illustrator only really materialized in her late teens and saw her withdraw from friends and family around her. Art ultimately proved to be her saving grace and served as a means of translating the broken thoughts and complex emotions that were constantly swirling around in her head into the real world.
Kim's monochrome works of art, which she describes as "beautiful dark twisted fantasies", are immediately recognizable. As an intoxicating mix of familiarity and surreality, they offer a poignant comment on the topics that affect us all at one point or another, from heartache to fantasy to grief. They clearly meet their fans too; She has gained a cult following on Instagram and regularly talks to her 870,000 followers about her innermost thoughts and feelings.
Kim is perhaps best known for her eye-catching cover illustration for Sally Rooney's novel Normal People, which shows a young couple hopelessly tangled like sardines in a can. She recently had the opportunity to revisit her original artwork in an advertising campaign for the novel's hugely popular BBC Three adaptation, in which her illustrations were brought to life on canvas. In addition, she has expanded her talents to a current project for Unicef. in which it presented the effects of pollution on children's health.
Here the illustrator discusses how she discovered the joy of creativity at a young age, why she only drew in black and white and how she found social media to be a surprisingly supportive place to expose her soul.