The Hand, the Eye and It | The Hand, the Eye, It and the foot

The Hand, the Eye and It is a documentated lecture performance in which a plasticine replica of Hedwig Houben’s hand, seen in the video as an amorphous, flesh-coloured object on the table, takes on the role of a mediator. The hand mediates between the performer (the eye of the maker) and the elusive ‘it’ (the thing that wants to be made). By naming the complexity of the relationships between the different elements, Houben draws our attention to their literal and symbolic roles. The work questions the division between subject and object, performer and maker, the hand and the eye. The video is an adaptation of the the sculpture.

The works of the Dutch artist Hedwig Houben can perhaps best be described as linguistic performances, in which she charts the artistic process and her own position as an artist. Houben delicately exposes, both on a personal and art-historical level, the creative process and the search for meaning in the production of art: the autonomy of a sculpture, artistic presentation, authenticity, value, and reality slowly unfold in a confusing and sometimes absurd word game. 

Houben’s work has been shown in group exhibitions such as Don’t You Know Who I Am? Art After Identity Politics, MuHKA, Antwerp; Dutch Don’t Dance, Aspect Ratio, Chicago; Six Possibilities for a Sculpture, La Loge, Brussels; The Moon has a Complicated Geography, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, and Definitional Disruptions, Kunstraum, London. Her recent solo exhibitions were at 1646, Den Haag; P/////AKT, Amsterdam, and Playstation, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam. Performances were presented, among others, at Goethe Institute Rotterdam; Piano Nobile, Geneva, and Playground, STUK, Leuven. Houben studied at the AKV | St. Joost, Breda, and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and was a resident at the Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten (HISK), Gent from 2010 until 2011.