02. The Politics of Small Gestures: Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art
Book by Mika Hannula
Hannula’s book, which I was introduced to during a Sculpture Seminar led by Rebecca Moss, explores the politics and poetics of meaningful small gestures. Defined by Hannula as self-reflective and self-critical acts, these gestures – regardless of their physical scale – remain accessible, and responsive, rooted in the ongoing nature of inquiry and open-ended research. Small gestures, in this context, activate a sense of localness allowing artworks to emerge as specific singularities – sensitive, situated instances through which we explore who we are, where we are, and how we relate to each other and our surroundings.
Being-with
Being-with
;)
Fig1: Hans Hemmert, Kapelle 2004. 3000 balloons, air, glue. Dimensions 600 x 380 x 400 cm. Installation view.
A particularly resonant idea appears in an interview with artist Hans Hemmert, who describes small gestures in his practice as a self-reflective and self-critical form of being-with. A process rooted in attentiveness to material intimacy and perceptual experience. Hemmert exemplifies this through his work Kapelle (2004), a cathedral made of air balloons. Seemingly familiar in form, the sculpture borrows visual cues from recognisable contexts, yet resists clarity as it slowly deflates while being perceived. This transformation challenges stable readings of the object, proposing an alternative version of reality where object-time-space exist and shift simultaneously, in themselves and through our presence with them.
This framework informs my own research. My method of being-with unfolds though a self-reflective engagement with materials, subjects and rhythms like half-forgotten embroidery motifs that are woven, braided, embroidered, and imprinted into elusive, tender and fragile surfaces.
For me, these intimate, repeated and ritualised gestures hold emotional resonance and guide a self-critical, open-ended research of iterative making, that is less about producing a resolved outcome and more about inhabiting the act of making itself. Like Hemmert, I do not aim to present a definitive version of reality, but to engage with an alternative – a small gesture toward something and somewhere else, filtered through remembering, making and material intimacy. It becomes, perhaps, a meditative search for home, belonging, or reconciliation, a return softly held in motion.
Specific Singularities
Hannula further references Olafur Eliasson’s idea of specific singularity, where meaning emerges not as a fixed message but through the dynamic interaction between space-object-body. This emphasis on process, presence, and transformation shapes my approach. I work with ephemeral, tender often brittle materials like caraway seeds, human hair, and glass cuts not to create products or visual spectacles, but to craft situated, intimate, site responsive sculptural ruminations – probing fragmented memory, presence in absence, and my perspective on an ever-unfolding experience of becoming.
This framework informs my own research. My method of being-with unfolds though a self-reflective engagement with materials, subjects and rhythms like half-forgotten embroidery motifs that are woven, braided, embroidered, and imprinted into elusive, tender and fragile surfaces.
For me, these intimate, repeated and ritualised gestures hold emotional resonance and guide a self-critical, open-ended research of iterative making, that is less about producing a resolved outcome and more about inhabiting the act of making itself. Like Hemmert, I do not aim to present a definitive version of reality, but to engage with an alternative – a small gesture toward something and somewhere else, filtered through remembering, making and material intimacy. It becomes, perhaps, a meditative search for home, belonging, or reconciliation, a return softly held in motion.
Specific Singularities
Hannula further references Olafur Eliasson’s idea of specific singularity, where meaning emerges not as a fixed message but through the dynamic interaction between space-object-body. This emphasis on process, presence, and transformation shapes my approach. I work with ephemeral, tender often brittle materials like caraway seeds, human hair, and glass cuts not to create products or visual spectacles, but to craft situated, intimate, site responsive sculptural ruminations – probing fragmented memory, presence in absence, and my perspective on an ever-unfolding experience of becoming.
Bibliography
Hannula, M. (2006) The Politics of Small Gestures: Changes and Challenges for Contemporary Art. Istanbul: Ofset Yapimevi.
Hannula, M. (2006) The Politics of Small Gestures: Changes and Challenges for Contemporary Art. Istanbul: Ofset Yapimevi.