Four Hands

"Four small flat-panel display screens mounted on an aluminum shelf present moving images of four pairs of hands. Shot with a black-and-white low-light camera, the hands of a young boy, a middle-aged woman and man, and an elderly woman are seen as they slowly and deliberately form a series of predetermined gestures. The gestures are both familiar and strange, influenced by a variety of sources from Buddhist mudras to 17th century English chirologia tables. The symbolic patterns of the motions of three generations of hands, son-mother-father-grandmother, describe a timeline that encompasses both the parallel actions of the individuals in the present moment and the larger movements of the stages of human life" (B. Viola, quoted in Bill Viola, The Passions, Los Angeles 2004).