Bill Viola’s ‘Four Hands’ (2001) piece, is one of many video installations from his series “The Passions,” a series which he started in 2000, in which, inspired by the art history of both the western and eastern world and spiritual practices, Viola examines the manifestation of emotions through captivating depictions of his subjects bodies, silence, slow motion and extreme contrasts between light and dark as he tackles the age old problem in art of how to convey the power and complexity of human emotions.
In this piece, Viola studies the hands, one of the most expressive parts of the human body. We as humans communicate a lot with our hands, whether it is through sign language or chirology. Due to this, often, subconscious communication through hand gestures, we can often tell more about an individual’s emotional state, what they are thinking and feeling etcetera through their hand gestures than their tone of voice, what they are saying or how they are holding and carrying themselves. Hands are a crucial part of story telling within an individual.
Within the piece,…show more content… The hands move slowly between varying positions and gestures such as changing from angrily clenched fists to fingers interlocking in a completive manner to finally, a more relaxed, self-comforting pose, drawing the viewer in, as they try to read and interpret the hand gestures, a language that is visual, comprising of more than just letters and grammar. Meanwhile, on one screen, the hands become cupped as if begging the viewer for some sort of
