your hand opens and closes and opens and closes

Video and Sound installation: Varsha Nair & Virginia Hilyard, 1999

Through the depiction of massage and boxing, this work addresses tensions that lurk beneath the skin and that are disguised in a culture driven by surface calm and beauty. The movement between strength and vulnerability, traversed in slow motion, is left open to interpretation within and beyond the frame.

your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralysed.

extract fromBirdwings

by Jelaluddin Rumi

Camera Virginia Hilyard

Edit Virginia Hilyard, Varsha Nair

Sound design Kaiwan Kulavadhanothai

Installed at: 24HR Art, Darwin, 2000. Cities on the Move 6, Bangkok, 2000. Womanifesto II, Bangkok, 1999. Artspace, Sydney, 1999. Time Capsule, a project by experimenta media arts, Melbourne, 1999. www.experimenta.org