To Aristotle, hands represented strength, power, protection, generosity, hospitality and stability. Hands build, destroy, create, manifest, feel, and tell stories. They can oppress and empower - they move in this interstitial space. This is the dialectic the photographs are invested in – resisting through years of oppressive acts towards economically underdeveloped nations, LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants, disabled bodies, and less fortunate ones. One click can change the lives of nations. Subtle movements can redirect and redistribute power and change the fate of nations, their religion, gender, and socio-political trajectory. It is important to remember here that it is not the hands of queer immigrants of color, black and women of color, disabled bodies and trans bodies that hold this power. It hasn’t been on the hands of the under-represented and oppressed to change and redirected their lives to better futures–not in the way that the dominant would grasp. A new consciousness that is resisting its political body and body politics, while building a new thread of connections of care, one that weaves itself subversively through the materialized aestheticized fabric of our culture as people today. It is on the hands of the dominant culture and it is time to join in difference and a new unity, a new consciousness, a praxis of care.

Shot with Pentax 6x7 black and white. Printed on hahnemuhle photo rag paper.