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GESTURES
WITH FLOWERS AND HANDS
Project Description
Through intensive graphite and mixed media
drawings, Gestures with flowers and hands
explores the parallel between decorum and
euphemism in the orchestrated body language
of politicians and the sentiment of flowers.
The goal of the project is to highlight and
deconstruct nuanced aspects of ceremonialism,
including the fragility of routinized gesture.
The handshake drawings are zoomed-in renditions
of Associated Press photographs. The handshakes
stand for hundreds of other mostly superficial
gestures over grave matters. In these instances
of exchange between bodies representing nation-states,
a handshake is most often a perfunctory ritual,
a masking of reality through formal means.
By leaving the faces and hands blank in these
drawings, my intent is to highlight through
absence—focusing attention on overlooked
gestures. Saturating paper with graphite through
repetitive marks and rubbing is an act of
slowing down the moment of each exchange—cementing
contemplation through the process of my hand.
Artist Statement
Sweaty palms and a downward glance. A wooing
gaze and open hand. Arms folded behind the
head, legs outstretched. Deception. Courtship.
Persuasion. There's a primacy in gesture,
a way it carries meaning and sticks.
In Gestures with hands and flowers, my focus
is on the symbolism of the political handshake.
Hands victorious, raised like eagles; hands
bowing, barely touching. Men shaking hands
like playing footsie. Hands graze, bow, divulge.
The handshake can serve as a greeting, an
offering, a truce, a false promise. A handshake
can be a point of connection or intimacy,
an expression of affection, or, at least,
a willingness to engage. Whether orchestrated,
spontaneous, or mediated; consoling, congratulatory,
or confusing, the hands tell a story:
- The Camp David Accords, twenty versions
of a truce
- Reagan and Gorbachev exchanging pens over
the arms race
- Clinton meeting Democratic lawmakers after
the House of Representatives voted to impeach
him, hands in improvisational dance
- Chirac separating Bush and Putin, they've
been shaking hands for too long.
An accompanying centerpiece is dedicated to
these handshakes—an arrangement referencing
a White House bouquet, with flowers selected
for their specific meanings. The arrangement
specifically quotes a bouquet created for
a White House dinner, a peripheral ceremonial
object. However, this bouquet is about exaggeration
and erasure, stripping the flowers of color
and life but surrounding them in piercing
red, an allusion to the darker undercurrents
of political exchange. To that end, flowers
were selected for their specific meanings
according to the Language of Flowers.
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the Project
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