The Body is the oldest sign carrier. Every hand is marked by hills, valleys, paths, and streams, as well as signs, patterns and types – personal topographies which intensify into landscapes and life-stories. I develop new cartographies out of these naturally occuring hand-landscapes : Handscapes. I am concerned by how the traditional western landscape painting and cartography embody the trained gaze upon unknown territories. I question the idea of boundaries, hegemony and ownership, and in doing so I encounter tensions between the politics of the body and painting, and between territories of art. My artistic mediun is the intimate surface of the skin. For a short moment the process of becoming a stranger to one’s own hand is startling.The palm of another becomes a map; the starting point of an imaginary journey. The relationship between closeness and distance, between intimate physical history and artistic appropriation, begin to shift.