Instead of using pins and buttons to stitch-up clothes, Korean-born artist Ran Hwang uses them to create gigantic installations in the shape of birds and cherry blossom trees.

To create her unique artworks, Ran Hwang hammers thousands of needles into a wall and hangs colorful pins from them. Seen from up close, her pin and button works look pixelated, but from afar, the whole piece seems to come together naturally. “My immense wall installations are extremely time consuming and repetitive manual work. This is a form of meditative practice that helps me find my inner peace. Like the monks practicing Zen facing the wall, my work is a form of performance that leads to finding oneself.” Hwang says about her unique technique.

Asked why she uses buttons as an art medium, the artist replies “because they are common and ordinary, like the existence of human beings”. She uses no glue in her art, so the buttons are free to move or fall at any time, which reflects the irresolute nature of human beings.

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During the “Rojo Nova Work in Progress” exhibition at the Sao Paolo Museum of Image and Sound, Australian artist Lucy McRae showcased her unique safety pin art.

Trained as a classical ballerina and architect, Lucy McRae has evolved into a body architect who “invents and builds structures on the skin that re-shape the human silhouette.” In a statement, the museum says “her provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery suggests a new breed; a future human archetype existing in an alternate world.”

This time, she relied on hundreds of safety pins, glued on most of her body, to depict how evolved humans might look in the alternate world of her vision. The first reaction upon seeing her is something like “what has she done to her body?”, but then you notice the pins are just glued to her skin and you begin admiring Lucy McRae as a work of art.

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