“I Hold It Towards You” Exhibition Explores the Profound Symbolism of the Human Hand
A captivating and enigmatic exhibition, “I hold it towards you,” currently on display at the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, offers a deeply immersive experience that prompts more questions than it answers—yet leaves visitors profoundly satisfied.
The exhibition, which opened in October and runs through Friday, December 12, 2025, conjures a “soft, accumulating thrum of curiosity,” according to contributing photographer Natalie Chinganga. Stepping into the ISOVIST Gallery feels, she writes, like arriving “on a new planet,” a space where even the artwork lacks traditional titles, fostering a unified and contemplative experience.
Featuring a diverse range of media—prints, textured surfaces, and meticulously crafted metalwork—the exhibition presents a compelling duality. While possessing a distinctly dystopian and metallic aesthetic, the central focus on hands imbues the work with a surprising warmth and familiarity. The exhibition is curated by New York-based writer and curator Fabiola Alondra.
One particularly striking piece depicts a hand transformed into a budding rose, its fingers unfurling like delicate petals from a thorn-covered stem. The artist’s choice to render the canvas with a natural, decomposing texture amplifies the work’s message of both fragility and potency. As Chinganga observes, the piece powerfully communicates how hands can “cultivate, caress, bruise—and cause harm if not handled with care.” It’s a testament to the precision inherent in both the artwork and the everyday actions we perform with our own hands.
Further exploration reveals two interconnected pieces: one portraying hands as withered trees entwined by a delicate thread emerging from murky waters, and another depicting hands clasped together by what appear to be cable fibers. These works evoke a childhood folklore tale— “The trees always listen but never speak”—suggesting a similar wordlessness in the language of hands. “Hands, too, have a kind of wordlessness,” Chinganga notes. “They tell truths the mouth cannot speak. They’re silent, but not void.” The thread and cables serve as “quiet channels” through which our deepest human connections flow.
The artists repeatedly return to metal and welding, highlighting humanity’s oldest and most fundamental tool: the hand. Metal, shaped by intense heat and pressure, embodies the entirety of human history—our capacity to explore, manipulate, construct, and, at times, exploit the earth. These works serve as a potent reminder that long before the advent of algorithms, industry, and machinery, there was the deliberate movement of the hand through fire and soil.
Among the most compelling elements of the exhibition are the miniature portraits, meticulously assembled from fragments of renowned artworks and even scientific graphs. Welded together, these pieces form a multi-storied structure, resembling a city of interconnected rooms, all crafted by hand. This assemblage, Chinganga suggests, may represent a time when hands were central to the very foundation of human civilization.
The exhibition also features organic ceramic forms juxtaposed with Polaroids, functioning as evocative memories. However, these Polaroids depict hands obscuring faces and blindfolding others, transforming the hand into an instrument of concealment.
Another piece presents two metal sheets, one pressing outward and the other inward, initially appearing abstract. Deeper contemplation reveals a meditation on revelation and concealment—what we choose to share and what we keep hidden. The inclusion of engraved Hindu text, translated as “auspicious gain,” adds another layer of meaning, potentially symbolizing the dual capacity of hands to create and destroy.
The exhibition culminates in a captivating centerpiece: a ring of stones connected by wires, which viewers can illuminate by plugging in their phones. This interactive element is described as “mysterious, elemental, playful,” and serves as an invitation to contemplate the power of electricity—another force harnessed and controlled by human hands.
Ultimately, “I hold it towards you” reveals a world where the hand comes alive, functioning as an archive, a technology, a repository of memory, and perhaps even a myth. The exhibition powerfully illustrates how the hand, in all its complexity, remains a defining element of the human experience.
