A question I’ve been getting for a while now is: why did we choose Hanhan?
The short answer is: I didn’t “choose” her in a strategic way. I stumbled into her work on a random afternoon, and it quietly stuck with me.
I was taking a mid-day Instagram break, doing that mindless scroll we all know too well, when I landed on her page. A painting of a white, pudgy kitten wearing a flower around its face stopped me. I liked the soft, muted palette right away, the pebbled brush strokes, the way all her characters are round with these very obvious, almost deadpan faces.
But the caption is what really stopped my scroll:
“Having walked through the darkest times, I finally blossomed as my own.”
Nothing dramatic changed in my life in that moment. I was still in the middle of my first true “no plan B” era—no backup job, no neat title to fall back on, just this new identity of “entrepreneur” I was still trying on. I felt excited on the surface, but underneath there was this knot of unease I didn’t really want to admit to anyone, including myself.
As I scrolled through her feed, something softened. Her works and the stories behind each gave me a strange sense of being seen by someone I had never met. It was a small moment, but I remember thinking, oh, this is the kind of feeling I want our world to hold.
Odd One In is about creating artful collectibles that look beautiful, yes. But more importantly, hold the kinds of small, familiar moments we’ve all felt before. We work with artists who posess a natural gift. People who are serious about their craft, but playful in how they see the world. Hanhan is exactly that.
On paper, she’s a rising contemporary artist who builds a soft universe of characters through sculpture and painting. She’s had multiple solo shows across Asia and has exhibited at renowned art fairs like West Bund, Art Taipei, and KIAF Seoul. All of that is impressive. But if I’m being honest, that’s not what made me feel so drawn to her.
What really stayed with me were her characters and the way she thinks about them.
Most of her subjects are animals who are actually cats in disguise. A cat dressed as a dog. A cat dressed as a dinosaur. A cat dressed as a furry monster. When we spoke, she told me she created them this way because sometimes we need to wear different masks in different situations—and that’s okay. At the core, we’re still ourselves. We’re just temporarily living through these different versions of us.
That felt strangely comforting. I often feel this pressure to “live authentically,” and at the same time I catch myself code-switching so I can feel socially acceptable or fit into certain spaces. That push and pull can be exhausting. I’d start questioning whether I was being fake or not proud enough of who I am.
Her cat-in-disguise universe offered another perspective. It felt like her work was gently saying: you’re allowed to be many things. You’re allowed to adjust. You can put on a social mask if you need to, and still be you underneath.
Her universe is full of quiet everyday scenes that look soft at first, but there’s almost always a twist.
One of my favorite paintings is a “bunny” wearing a ski mask, ready for action. A fluffy pink creature trying to look tough, but clearly still a soft bunny. The brush strokes are dotted and patient, the colors are soft and comforting. But you cannot miss the mask, and you realize there’s a quiet joke there about being tougher than people assume you are.
Another piece shows a “dog” looking at a worm. On first glance, it looks like they’re just calmly hanging out. But in the story behind it, the dog is actually thinking about eating the worm for dinner later. Again, soft on the surface, slightly wicked on the inside.
Her visual language is very consistent: dotted brush strokes, muted tones, rounded forms that naturally make your shoulders drop a little when you look at them. But if you stay with them for more than a second, you realize each piece hides a little shard of dark humor or rebellion.
She once told me that, as someone naturally soft-spoken, her paintings are where she hides her rebellions against the world and all its supposed orders. To me, they read almost like a gentle statement: I don’t have to be nice all the time.
As a woman, that felt like a deep exhale. So much of the time, we’re expected to be kind, accommodating, “nice.” It’s almost radical to say: I can be kind and still be angry. I can be soft and still have edges. I can be a little strange for no good reason other than that’s how I feel that day. Her characters hold that complexity really well: they’re tender, but they’re not naive.
A lot of her pieces feel like a single still frame from life. A kitten treasuring a hand-picked flower, not a rare, dramatic flower, just an ordinary wild daisy that’s special because it came from someone she loves. Her works are inspired by these quiet moments: waking up by a warm ray of sunlight, meeting her favorite artist at a fair, eating a really hearty dinner after a long day. They’re reminders that the good parts of life are often small, and easy to miss if we rush past them.
I like keeping her pieces around my place for that reason. They don’t scream for attention. If you’re not intentional, you might miss them amidst a gallery of louder, more aggressive works. But like the real joys in our lives, they naturally spark a smile if you choose to notice.
The namesake monster “Hanhan” is, in a way, a version of the artist herself. She created this character during a period when she felt lonely and misunderstood. “Hanhan” is a fluffy giant who looks intimidating because of its size, but is actually friendly and generous with love. Hanhan created this gentle companion to accompany us through our highs and lows, but we can also see a reflection of ourselves in “Hanhan”. The monster experiences life, hits rough patches, and keeps going—just like we do.
When we think about collaborating with an artist at Odd One In, we usually come back to three things:
First, their work has to align with our core philosophy: building a world where we notice small joys and capture them in artist-crafted pieces. We want each piece to feel like a small edition of a feeling or moment that feels familiar.
Second, they have to care deeply about their craft. Hanhan is meticulous. For Taste of Love alone, we went through more than twenty rounds of iterations together. She was never afraid to say, “I don’t feel it yet,” even when it meant more work. We appreciated that so much. It made the final collection feel true to her, and us.
Third, we care about who they are as a person. This matters more than anything. Hanhan is a young woman with a big heart and a quietly strong soul. She pours every bit into her work. Each piece carries a small wish from her: that whoever comes across it will slow down just a little, and notice the happiness already sitting in the corners of their life.
In many ways, Hanhan’s work embodies the reasons we started Odd One In in the first place. She reminds me, and hopefully you, to live a little more freely, to take our oddness less seriously, and to stay open to the small, quiet joys that make everything else worth it.
Till Next Time,
Gloria