Aichi Triennale 2019

Over the past ten-odd years, it has become a natural habit of sorts that we hold smartphones in our hands. Such devices have become objects that are so close to our bodies that they are now almost parts of it. Never before have we been moved as strongly as by the flood of information that spills over from their small screens, and that has introduced entirely new forms of meeting, passing and parting with others. This work was inspired by the question what a monument would have to be like to function as a symbol of our age. While the sculpture of large hands itself is reminiscent of enlightening socialist monuments, the screens these hands hold up are facing each other to made it look as if the faces shown on them were kissing. However one may also see them as two separate photographs of people that just happened to have their eyes closed. The fact that the hand sculpture is easy to copy, as that part was created by outputting data using a 3-D printer, gives the sculpture a sort of lightness that is yet different from that of enlightening monuments, and thereby adds a notion of uncertainty to the things this work symbolizes.