Social/Political Hand Sculpture

This project was really fun. We were asked again to choose a social or political issue to depict, using only hands to say a message. It was pretty difficult to choose an issue that I was both passionate about and that I could create a meaningful message using only hands and decided very last minute what I would be doing. Some of my favorite art projects are those that involve some kind of chemistry and in order to create molds of our hands, some chemistry was required. We used something called alginate, mixed with water which when left out for long enough, turns into this kind of dense jello. Before that stage, me and a partner stuck our hands into the liquid form, in the position we wanted our hands to come out in, and stayed there for around ten minutes until it solidified around us. After that we carefully wiggled out and poured plaster into the empty space where our hands were, effectively creating these super realistic molds of our hands. The most fun thing was digging the plaster molds out of the dried alginate and etching away at any weird clumps that may have stuck around the forms. My hands were attached so it was somewhat easier to clean the surface and etch away any imperfections. My initial idea for an issue was to depict date rape, positioning my hands so one was gripping the other in a hand-lock and the other with fingers straight up to show a disinterest in ‘holding hands’. But once I had the plaster mold, that idea began to fade when the process of adding paint and props to accentuate the message came. It seemed more appropriate to show this as domestic abuse between two spouses rather than rape, so I chose props and added other features to make that idea clearer. To do so, I etched deep lines into the hand of the ‘abused’ and used black eyeshadow to paint around the fingertips of the gripping hand and into those lines. And finally to really prove the point, I took an old ring with a heart-shaped gem in the center, wrapped it in this chain that I made out of wire and placed it on the ring finger of the abused hand. Before I added the black, I wasn’t super thrilled with how this looked, but since doing so, I am much happier with this piece and think, although subtle, the message is reasonably clear just as I wanted it to be.