Statement

I began to notice that too many paintings of women throughout history recorded them in passive gestures, often with hands folded in their laps. The Grimm Fairy Tale, The Handless Maiden also inspired my thinking about women’s apparent passivity – a complex history of loss of agency.  At that time, I was working predominantly with lithography and cast paper sculptures. Using a reproduction of the Mona Lisa’s hands as the most recognizable hands in painting history, I began to work with the imagery of folded hands. I made a plaster cast of my own hands in this position and photographed the resulting cast-paper hands. I used this photograph often in my prints.  This work is a continuation of this theme.