A solo exhibition curated by Berfin Cicek featuring Emily Hana.
The Hugging Machine is an intimate meditation on loneliness, artificial intimacy and the longing for touch. Rooted in a childhood memory of building a hugging device from pillows and yellow marigold gloves, Hana transforms a personal gesture of self-comfort into a larger investigation of skin hunger. The psychological and physical effects of touch deprivation.
In these paintings, human figures interact with fabricated, machine-like forms that mimic closeness yet fail to offer the warmth of genuine connection. At once tender and uncanny, the works ask what happens when we attempt to manufacture intimacy and how we cope with distance in an increasingly disconnected world.
Recurring motifs from the sterile marigold gloves to the vulnerable human hand chart a dialogue between separation and closeness, artifice and authenticity. Where gloves act as mediated surrogates for contact, hands emerge as central figures: primal tools of reaching, holding and knowing.
Through this interplay of absence and desire, Hana's work exposes the fragility of our need for touch, while holding space for a quiet hope that even in unconventional forms, gestures of care and comfort can still be found.
Artist:
Emily Hana
Curator:
Berfin Cicek
Address:
261 City Road
London
EC1V 1JX
Private View:
16 Oct
6-9pm
Opening times:
17-22 Oct
12-6pm
Admission is free. RSVP is required for Private View on 16th Oct.
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