The Nail doesn’t Grow Apart from the Body, 2022

In this artwork, I perceive the Nail and Hand as an accessory rather than a body part. I consider the hand through the ritual of painting the fingernails. I view these rituals as a sensitive and emotional encounter. Long fingernails on a hand capture alien and unnatural hand movements that one has as soon as their fingernails have a length of more than 2 cm. Then the Hand becomes its own creation due to the long fingernails which change and partially restrict mobility and motoric skills. The long claws aesthetically merge the human hand with uncanny and un-human creatures. They distance themselves from the human body once being placed on their own.

– The Nails and Tentacle are objects that reach out –

Organic structures can be found in them. Round shapes, gel textures and extreme color spectrums allow visual movements that are in dissonance with the reduced motoric ability of the hand.

– The Nail is in the eye of the beholder –


A focus is placed on the materials, as they differ from the materials usually chosen to create nail art - it is a translation. By intuitively applying materials to the fake Nails, Minuscule Sculptures come alive. At hand, playing with different focal points on the small ones, the eye is drawn to different layers of these Minuscule Sculptures. The distance, the proximity and the multiplicity of the sculptures change the experience depending on which focus is placed on them.

– 10 nails form a hand, one nail stands for itself –

This investigation goes beyond the visual experiment by shifting the focus and turning the painting of the fingernails into an encounter between the painter and the painted one. A space without linear time, a feminine safe-space.

– The Minuscule Sculptures are placed on a grand scale –

The Minuscule Sculptures are anchored in the form of a table that is meant to provide sensitive and emotional encounters. The connection is made through the formation of minuscule sculptures and one immense sculpture. Movement and organic patterns are reproduced, creating a space that provides and harbors care. Waves are created. Time is lost. Senses are stimulated. A playground emerges from the deep sea. Colors bring them together. Bright tones create and shape inner feelings, which lead to a feminine view on the shared space.

A space where there are no corners and that is tactilely agile. A space where you are made to feel safe. Patterns are maximized, embodied ripples merge into the body, movements change.

1Cf: Jansen CW, Patterson R, Viegas SF: Effects of fingernail length on finger and hand performance. J Hand Ther, 2000, 13: 211–217.

Shown at Radical Matter, Künstlerhaus Wien, 2022