Hands Up
2018
Museum de Mesdag Collectie
Den Haag

Hands Up 2018

One hour in the seawater and my hands are wrinkled, distorted as if they were not my hands anymore. I assumed a physiological reaction, the result of fluid absorption in the skin. But no - it is survival instinct. The brain evolved our hands and feet to wrinkle because it knows that we are vulnerable in the water. Wet hands and feet are slippery. As on car tires we produce a profile in the skin to have more grip. The brain helps us to survive the water.
But then a high fence with sharp golden points awaits. Again, those hands must defy the danger - as a sign of helpless surrender, or as a stop sign against inhumanity. They show the political dimension of the sea, not as manifest but silent as the sea itself.