Imagine peeking through a tangle of leaves and catching just glimpses of someone’s face. That’s the world Toronto-based artist Christine Kim invites us into with her ethereal portraits. Using mixed-media collages, Kim layers textured graphite, gradients, and delicate cutouts to create faces and hands that emerge from—or disappear into—a web of foliage.
“I keep returning to the word ‘fragmentary’, portraiture is about catching glimmers of a person. I like the idea of not seeing everything.” And that’s exactly what makes her work feel so magical: multiple layers partially conceal her subjects while the botanical patterns act like a gentle shelter, both hiding and revealing at the same time.
Kim starts each piece by illustrating a figure—some of her subjects include models Yuka Mannami and Hoyeon Jung—and then digitally draws matching botanical motifs. Using a Silhouette Cameo machine, she carefully cuts each layer and builds the portraits sheet by sheet. The results are graceful, surreal, and endlessly intriguing: fractions of faces and hands duplicated or filtered through webs of stems, leaves, and color.
These layered portraits feel like stepping into a dream where identity, nature, and pattern intertwine. Christine Kim’s work isn’t just about likeness—it’s about glimpses, hints, and the quiet beauty of what’s partially hidden.
