Manila-based Artist Kim Lim. Photographed by Wesley Villarica
Before she started painting for herself, Kim Lim was painting for others. In many ways, she still does.
The paintings that Kim Lim showcases in her Bangkok exhibition, Teeth and Tenderness, bear little resemblance to the ones she once created as an interior designer. In her early career, delicate florals and soft abstractions complemented the commercial and residential spaces she designed. It wasn’t until the stillness of the pandemic that Lim redirected her art inward. “During the pandemic, I just started to paint for myself,” she recalls. “It’s a way of breathing, it’s a way of healing.”
Creative expression can serve as a conduit for processing grief, regaining agency, and building resilience, especially for those in environments that suppress individuality. Various initiatives, art organizations, and events are held in public and private spaces in various levels of accessibility. Earlier this year, Art Fair Philippines opened its doors to the public for a weekend in Makati, and galleries all over the city participated in the 10 Days of Art.
But how does art heal in spaces where it is absent? This is the gap Lim attempts to bridge through Kapit Kulay Foundation, an initiative dedicated to providing hope for women and children, particularly those deprived of liberty. When Lim was asked by a friend to visit a correctional facility, she was moved at how the detainees had prepared performances for their arrival.
Lim realized something profound: despite their confinement, these women found moments of freedom through movement and creativity. “They look forward to this. They look forward to creating. Movement, or art, it’s all part of exercising your creativity.”
For Lim, art had been a personal sanctuary, a means of navigating change and reimagining her place in the world. She saw how it could serve the same purpose for incarcerated women: people whose lives were dictated by routine, restraint, and the slow erosion of personal identity. In an environment designed to strip away autonomy, creativity becomes an act of defiance. It asserts that even within physical confinement, the mind remains free.
The foundation conducts activities in detention centers, providing women with a space to create freely and express their experiences through art. Unsurprisingly, much of their work reflects personal trauma. Recognizing the need for deeper support, Lim plans to collaborate with psychologists and other industry professionals to offer a more holistic approach, ensuring that creative expression is accompanied by the necessary emotional and psychological care.
Lim’s work with Kapit Kulay does not exist in isolation from her art. If anything, the relationship between the two is symbiotic. The stories, the struggles, the small triumphs of the women she meets find their way into her canvases. The exhibition Teeth and Tenderness is a descent into a macabre Alice in Wonderland, where the artist depicts a surrealist brutality and beauty that is ever-present in women’s reality. “To be a woman is challenging enough,” Lim states. “We are limited to just doing specific things. I want to expand that horizon. I can hold this foundation and still have a painting career. We can do all these things.”
In the titular painting, Lim paints a woman wedged in between two creatures. In “Still We Rise,” a lone figure pushes through a dense forest, almost crossing a finish line. Lim’s depictions explore the dualities women are expected to embody, even amidst the circumstances that suppress them. With her use of vivid colors and dynamic brushstrokes, Lim makes it nearly impossible not to root for them.
