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.
Ich reise auf Blättern und in fremden Händen. // I travel on leaves and in strangers hands.