THE HAND AS SCULPTURE
The Hand as Sculpture is a digital black-and-white photo series spanning works from 2022 to 2023.
Prepared in August, the series was begun as a Free Project module under Pio Rahner in my studies in Visual Communication at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar from November 2022 to January 2023, wherafter it was carried on outside of the curriculum, being planned to be completed in September. As a free project of my curriculum, the theme, execution and presentation of the project was in my own domain and did not necessitate dictation.
The idea for The Hand as Sculpture was born out of multiple variables, the first being my early experience of traditional Khmer dance in Cambodia (where I used to live) which, just like growing up there, deeply impacted me as a person. The second are my endeavours in figurative art, especially drawing and painting. My works are heavily sculptural and concern themselves with the beauty of the human body as a whole. It is this context that has extensively shaped my familiarisation with the works of Auguste Rodin, Denis Sarazhin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Fabien Dettori and Nanda Haagenars (amongst others) which in return have shaped my photographic work. It was when familiarising myself with Mapplethorpe’s “Lucinda’s Hands” (1985) that I was sorrowed that the approach of the portrait towards the hand since then had either been succeeded with works that for me did not sufficiently followed the theme or had been disregarded as a whole. To put it short: there are few photos (those of the photographers mentioned above) that intrigue me in the same way as Mapplethorpe’s work. The last of my overall reason is my neurodivergent background. Although being finally diagnosed during the project, there were already strong suspicions that I am autistic. Not only do I like to deal with abstract concepts and not my work is very detail-focussed – body language as a whole has been something to be learned consciously in my youth (an undergoing that stood in conjunction with being an amateur theatre actor for eight years). The result of this is a high focus and awareness on and of body language, especially gesture.
The series images extensively investigate the complexities of gesture in the way of studio portraiture across age and gender. Spanning from recongnisable yet vaguely interpretable sign to abstract studies of form, the detail and sculptural qualities of the hand are shown in ways often seen but rarely perceived.
The Hand as Sculpture will be published as a book by the LUCIA Verlag by the end of this year.
