The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art presents Hold My Hand in Yours
September 6, 2025鈥擬arch 29, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 6, 3鈥�6 PM
MALIBU, California 鈥� The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at 歪片星球 is pleased to announce Hold My Hand in Yours, a group exhibition that explores the hand as a powerful symbol in contemporary art. Across painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, video, installation, and social practice, the artists in this exhibition consider the hand not only as a site of artistic production, but as an agent of connection, memory, labor, resistance, and care.
The exhibition unfolds across three intersecting thematic threads:
Care, Community, and Connection
At the heart of the show is a deep attention to caregiving and interdependence鈥攅motional, physical, and political. Cara Levine, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, and Elana Mann and Sharon Chohi Kim explore how sound, speech, and nonverbal expression can function as care-based communication. Constantina Zavitsanos examines disability and interdependence as radical frameworks for rethinking value and attention, encapsulated in an elegant installation of bathroom grab bars that ascend the museum wall. Works by Christine Mitchell Adams and Samantha Roth document the daily choreography of maternal care, offering gestures of holding, gripping, and letting go. Karl Haendel鈥檚 drawing of Amanda Ross-Ho鈥檚 hands nods both to the centrality of the hand as an artistic tool鈥攁lso invoked by Ross-Ho鈥檚 monumentally scaled latex gloves鈥攁nd to Haendel鈥檚 cultivation of a community of artists that inform and appear in his work. The collective Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS) uses collaboratively produced textiles and ceramics鈥攊ncluding hands that exhibition visitors are invited to hold鈥攖o bridge political and cultural divides along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Archive and Trace
Other artists approach the hand as a recorder of memory, a witness to history, or an index of presence. Sabrina Gschwandtner pays homage to forms of undervalued labor traditionally done by women in her lightbox-mounted film quilts, while Stephanie Syjuco considers the politics of visibility and representation in archival images through a project that revisits documentation of the Philippine Village at the 1904 World鈥檚 Fair. Andrea Chung engages the mythic realm of Drexciya, an underwater world populated by the children of enslaved pregnant women who jumped or were thrown overboard on their journey across the Atlantic, with a group of outstretched arms holding beads and crystals. Joetta Maue鈥檚 Gesture of Touch catalogues moments of tenderness captured in her family photographs, while Assignment #30, from Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July鈥檚 web project Learning to Love You More, does the opposite, by soliciting photographs of strangers holding hands. The assignment will be reactivated for this exhibition, with new digital submissions shared on the museum鈥檚 Instagram account and analogue submissions鈥攊n the form of Polaroids鈥攄isplayed on the wall of the museum.
The Body as Image and Record
A final set of works use the hand to stand in for the body. Yvonne Rainer鈥檚 1966 Hand Movie isolates her hand in movement during a period of postsurgical immobilization, while Carmen Argote鈥檚 fingerprints and surface scratches register the body鈥檚 presence at the core of her gestural work. Janine Antoni鈥檚 ornately framed photographs of her own hands and those of her mother speak to intergenerational care taking and the body as a portal from one realm to another. Similarly, Roksana Pirouzmand鈥檚 animatronic clay sculpture A tap, a word features a cast of her own body in child鈥檚 pose, crowned by pairs of her mother鈥檚 hands. Kelly Akashi鈥檚 bronze hand, made in the wake of the fire that claimed her home and studio, is the latest in a long-running series of sculptures of her own hand, each recording the subtle changes the body experiences over time. Lauren Seiden鈥檚 installation of graphite powder pooled in glass vessels captures the hand through the trace it leaves behind, in small fissures and cracks that expose the work to the effects of evaporation and ultimately point to the invisible labor of maintenance.
Hold My Hand in Yours is a meditation on the radical potential of the hand as a symbol of closeness and shared experience. In an era defined by digital distance and social fragmentation, these artists return us to profound possibilities of embodied connection.
Participating artists and collectives:
Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS), Christine Mitchell Adams, Kelly Akashi, Janine Antoni, Carmen Argote, Andrea Chung, Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Karl Haendel, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Cara Levine, Elana Mann and Sharon Chohi Kim, Joetta Maue, Roksana Pirouzmand, Yvonne Rainer, Amanda Ross-Ho, Samantha Roth, Lauren Seiden, Stephanie Syjuco, and Constantina Zavitsanos.
Hold My Hand in Yours is curated by Weisman Museum of Art director Andrea Gyorody. Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Diane Reilly and the Pasadena Art Alliance.
DIGITAL GALLERY GUIDE
Exclusive audio and interpretive text for Hold My Hand in Yours will be available beginning Saturday, September 6, on the Bloomberg Connects app. The material can be accessed anytime, anywhere, by downloading the app and searching for the Weisman Museum.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 6, from 3 to 6 PM at the Weisman Museum
Join us to celebrate the public opening of Hold My Hand in Yours on Saturday, September 6, from 3 to 6 PM. Enjoy complimentary refreshments, family-friendly
art activities in the Sculpture Garden, and a panel discussion with featured artists
in the exhibition. Limited seating for the talk is first come, first served. Registration
for the reception is recommended but not required.
Nothing can come of nothing, speak again
Performance by Sharon Chohi Kim and Elana Mann
Saturday, November 8, 2025, 4 PM
This performance by Sharon Chohi Kim and Elana Mann fuses sonic sculpture and voice,
amplifying the tensions of freedom of speech, the dissonances of communication, and
the attempted silencing of voices. Performers move, listen and vocalize, activating
sound and silence, with Mann鈥檚 Call to Arms sculptures and costumes and Kim鈥檚 composition
and direction. The performance includes a list of words banned by the current administration
and a composition that confronts the silencing of women's voices, while offering strategies
for collective empowerment. Accompanying the performance is ASL interpreter/performer
Caroline Blaike.
Artist Talk: Cara Levine
Wednesday, November 19, Noon
Across her wide-ranging body of work, L.A.-based artist Cara Levine discusses the
technology of touch and the potential of craft to create social change.
Additional programs will be announced on the museum鈥檚 website and on social media.
IMAGE CREDIT
From left to right: Still from Yvonne Rainer, Hand Movie, 1966, 8mm film transferred to video (black and white, silent), 6:00 minutes. 漏 2025 Yvonne Rainer. Courtesy Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Joetta Maue, The Gesture of Touch (detail), 2019鈥搊ngoing, archival prints; details from vernacular photographs from family archive, overall: 60 x 102 inches. Courtesy of the artist. Roksana Pirouzmand, A tap, a word, 2024, ceramic, motor, thread, metal; 48 x 17 x 18 inches (body), 9 x 9 x 14 inches (mount). Courtesy of the artist and Franc抬ois Ghebaly, Los Angeles, New York.
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ABOUT THE FREDERICK R. WEISMAN MUSEUM OF ART
Dedicated in September 1992, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art is sited at the heart of Seaver College on 歪片星球鈥檚 oceanside campus. For more than 30 years, the Weisman has showcased modern and contemporary art by internationally recognized artists, with a focus on art made in California. The sole art museum located in Malibu, the Weisman is part of the larger Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts, serving thousands of residents from Los Angeles and Ventura Counties each year, in addition to visitors from around the country and the world. The museum's student-centered program aims to empower every visitor to look, listen, and learn from works of art and from one another.
Notable past exhibitions include The Cultivators: Highlights from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection; numerous thematic shows drawn from the collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation; and solo shows of work by Lita Albuquerque, Larry Bell, Squeak Carnwath, Dale Chihuly, 歪片星球 Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Karl Haendel, Hildur A虂sgeirsdo虂ttir Jo虂nsson, Roy Lichtenstein, Mercedes Matter, Gwynn Murrill, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol.
The museum is open Tuesday鈥揝unday, 11 AM鈥�5 PM, and is closed on Mondays and major holidays. Admission is always free and advance reservations are not required.
Media Contact
Andrea Gyorody
Director, Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art