TALKING HANDS / KONUŞAN ELLER
Artists:
Vahap Avşar (TR/US), Khaled Barakeh (SY/DE), Osman Bozkurt (TR), Shahrzad Changalvaee (IR/US), Eda Çekil (TR), Parastou Forouhar (IR/DE), Rebuar Rezzak İlge (TR), Evrim Kavcar (TR), Wouter Osterholt & Elke Uitentuis (NL), Nasan Tur (TR/DE)
When does a hand become more than just a hand?
G-art Gallery presents Talking Hands / Konuşan Eller from 21 November 2026 to 16 January 2027, bringing together artists from different geographies and generations to explore a network of relationships that operate through the body. Featuring Vahap Avşar, Khaled Barakeh, Osman Bozkurt, Shahrzad Changalvaee, Eda Çekil, Parastou Forouhar, Rebuar Rezzak İlge, Evrim Kavcar, Wouter Osterholt & Elke Uitentuis, and Nasan Tur, the exhibition brings together the changing meanings of the hand across different historical and social contexts.
Across centuries and cultures, the hand has remained one of the most enduring subjects in art. From the handprints left on prehistoric cave walls to the present day, it has served as a means of communication and a form of social record. It conveys human emotion with a force that few other things can match. The hand is where thought becomes action, where the inner world reaches out and leaves its mark on the world. Yet a hand is rarely just a hand. Its meaning can change entirely from one place, culture, or historical moment to another. It belongs to the body, but what it signifies is shaped by geography, culture, gender, class, political history, belief, and relations of power. The same open palm, raised arm, or joined fingers do not mean the same thing everywhere. Gestures are learned, passed on, and repeated. They can be appropriated by those in power, adopted by a community as signs of resistance, prohibited, or given new meanings at another moment in history.
The works in the exhibition trace the changing meanings of the hand under different historical and social conditions. One of the exhibition's central concerns is the hand's role both as an instrument of action and as a bearer of meaning. What connects these works is the capacity of the same part of the body to carry different, even opposing, meanings. The language of the hand is found not only in gestures that are made, but also in those left unfinished, in unanswered attempts to reach out, and in the spaces where contact is broken. It is precisely this variability of meaning that gives the hand its expressive power.
The exhibition asks how the hand comes to carry such different social meanings. As works from different places and generations come together, what emerges is less a shared iconography of the hand than a network of relationships operating through the body.
A hand does not speak on its own. Its meaning depends on the body that raises it, the person it addresses, and the historical moment in which it moves. To understand a hand, we must therefore ask who raises it, to whom it is extended, whom it holds, what it touches, what it points to, when it becomes a fist, and at what moment it is withdrawn.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The exhibition is on view at G-art Gallery until 16 January 2027, Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00–19:00. Closed on Sundays and Mondays.