'Gold Hands for Democracy' is an Austrian Initiative through the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and is supported by the Ukrainian Institute of America and 16 EU Consul Generals and Cultural Institutions based in NYC.
I gather handprints in gold to remind us of the value of humanity.
I gather handprints in gold to remind us of the value of humanity.
This Project began under the name "Hands to Heal, not to Kill" in response to the political climate in the US before going into Iraq in 2003. A collection of more than 700 gold acrylic hand prints gathered to illuminate the positive attributes of mankind by blurring the boundary between nationality, religion, ethnicity, and gender.
At the Boxo Projects Art Residency, I collaborated with local shamanic practitioners on the process called soul retrieval, which parallels Bollas' psychoanalytical notion of "Extractive Introjection"- the robbing of parts of one's psyche. The shaman guides in the exchange of giving back what belonged to someone else and getting back what originally belonged to the subject within the metaphysical world. Fragments and Elements, take on a ritualistic or shamanistic aura and relate to the universal process of self-evolution.
Since 2007 I have been working with various holistic approaches to heal my own body—including shamanic, energy work, weight training, deep tissue massage and conventional medicine and therapy. This is the work that has come from that place.
