Hanwen is a painter and sculptor living in Chicago, born and grew up in Shanghai, China. She will achieve her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2025. Her work reconstructs fragmented memories, blending reality and imagination to explore the fluid nature of identity and perception. Working with materials that move and resist control, the process mirrors the shifting essence of memory, emotion, and human connection. Through painting and sculpture, she reveals what lies beneath everyday interactions, capturing the tension between presence and absence, intimacy and distance.