Lifeline / Línea de vida, 2005-20

Palm reading’s origins are very old, and I have always found it fascinating. The most important lines to be read on a palm are: the line of life, of the heart, of the head and the fate line. For this work I zeroed on the life line by taking the imprint of my left hand palm and reproducing it. In a sense the imprint is the negative of a positive.This work is not part of my site, nor has ever been presented publicly.

The work has gone through different versions. The first was unstable as I used ‘skin’ tone plasticine. I wanted that fragility to come through. I had designed it to be shown on hanging acrylic shelves.
Then I started working with another material that could be baked and make it more stable. This was interesting, now the imprint was fixed. I used smaller round pieces of the material creating a sort of small shell. Interestingly enough I think that was what made some people cringed. It created other references of actual kitsch work, in and around seashells. That reference was not there for me. As I finished painting them silver, they had become something else. The work for me was strengthened by the paint. This last version of the work presents it as an installation, which has each perforated piece, pinned against a wall, creating a funnel shape. Each piece is unique.

The attached documentation shows examples of the two versions of the work.
To have part of my body presented as such is a powerful gesture. This is tied to work I did on fingerprints, on photographing my tongue and my face. All of these are different ways to define identity and self. I do think all of this work comes out of my experience as an immigrant, a continuous definition of the self.