Moe Satt’s double-channel video Nothing But Fingers (all works cited, 2023) centers on the expressive potential of hand gestures and their ability to direct flows of bodily energy. It begins with the artist and his collaborator Liah Frank shown on separate channels. Their limbs twist and turn, their agile fingers constantly taking on new configurations mimicking animal parts (a beak, a horn, a wing) or traditional dance in Myanmar. The performers’ hands dictate their body movements, prompting their arms to stretch out behind their backs into a V shape or to contract to compress their bodies into a cylindrical shape. The two figures eventually join one another on the same screen. The video ends with the performers raising their palms in unison, perhaps as a final act of surrender.
Satt’s retrospective exhibition “Hunting & Dancing: 15 years” allows us a glimpse into the world of the artist’s performances. He imbues his fascination with non-verbal communication with his memories of political turmoil in Myanmar. Through this lens, the fingers become tools for those who are politically silenced or exiled. This idea informs the accompanying artist book F n’ F (Face and Fingers), in which Satt documents his experiments in using his fingers to pantomime using a mask, a monocle, or a loudspeaker, pointing toward the subversive potential embedded in everyday gestures.
