A light and dance performance collaboration between a Canadian dancer Lydia Zimmer, an Australian photographer and artist Georgina Campbell and lighting artist Laura Jade. The work was created during an artist in residence program at NES Studios in Skagastrond, Iceland. Laura Jade experimented with phosphorescent powder and light on Lydia’s hands. Lydia’s improvised dance and movement vocabulary explored the light to create an embodied experience of the aurora borealis.
The hand is a paradox—one of the greatest tools of human evolution, and yet not fundamentally more advanced than the limb structures of ancient fish. Our hands evolved from finned ancestors. The genes hoxa13 and hoxd13, responsible for fish fin rays, are the same ones that form our fingers—linking us molecularly to our aquatic origins.
What makes the human hand extraordinary isn’t just its anatomy—our long, opposable thumb or individual finger control—but its integration with our complex nervous system. Neural circuitry developed so that hand muscles receive direct communication from our brains. This allowed the hand to become not just a tool, but an extension of consciousness itself. As Aristotle said, it is “the tool of tools.” Every gesture—precise, fluid, expressive—is an echo of our inner lives.
Hands are rich with nerve endings, second only to the lips and tongue, making them one of the most sensitive ways we perceive the world. In this sense, they function almost as a second set of eyes—seeing through touch.
In this work, I seek to understand the hand as more than anatomy. It is a site of memory, gesture, identity, expression, and transformation. It is where body and brain meet, where evolution and culture intersect. Through meditative practices and artistic inquiry, I engage the hand as a portal—into the depths of the self, the fluidity of identity, and the long memory of our species.
Filmed by Georgina Campbell. Edited and soundscape created by Laura Jade.
