Hands
In the process of working with the Kelsey objects, again and again I found myself re-deploying the hand from an image of Athena on a small Greek lekythos. Shifted from one context to another, that one hand seemed to have unlimited expressive and narrative potential...
Hands
In the process of working with the Kelsey objects, again and again I found myself re-deploying the hand from an image of Athena on a small Greek lekythos. Shifted from one context to another, that one hand seemed to have unlimited expressive and narrative potential. It was a reminder of the laborers who fashioned these objects. It was an expression of my own fascination with the centrality of making in the development of human cognition, and also of how we use our hands as a form of symbolic communication to shape and express our inner states.
I also kept re-using that one hand because so many hands were missing in the objects around me. Meanwhile, in the paintings and sculptures at UMMA hands are central to narrating abstract concepts, the dynamics of human relationships, and the identities of depicted figures. I began plundering the hands that I found at UMMA because I needed them so badly to bring the objects from the Kelsey to life, to give them contemporary agency within my developing narrative. In the end, that plundering became the narrative itself.
Hands taken from paintings and sculptures from the University of Michigan Museum of Art collection
