During this year’s Venice Biennale, Pinchuk Art Center presented the collateral event “From Ukraine: Dare to Dream,” a group exhibition curated by Björn Geldhof, Ksenia Malykh and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak which boldly questions the possibility of a future given the devastation and horror of Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The invited artists hailed not only from Ukraine but also other countries such as Nigeria, India, Turkey, and Cuba. Together, the artists asked how human vulnerability might exist in the context of global disasters, focusing specifically on strategies of survival within catastrophic terrains. During the exhibition’s opening days, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins presented an eight-minute-long performance cryptically entitled Federico. The work’s title, a person’s name, gives it a very personal character, locating it in an intimate, bodily, and possibly autobiographical, area. Through his performative language of micro-gestures, Baczynski-Jenkins made audiences think less precisely about who ‘Federico’ is and more about their affects and emotions.

Performers Bassem Saad and Nomi Sladko (alternating with Boji Moroz and Sasha Malyuk on other hours) entered the Renaissance Palazzo Contarini Polignac and faced each other, standing among the exhibited artworks. Saad and Sladko remained silent, still, and close. They proceeded to touch each other’s right hands with just their fingertips. Saad’s fingers wandered over her partner’s open palm. Their hands rose together slowly and fell a little faster, circling and negotiating the space between both of their bodies. At one point, their hands got close to each of their chests before retreating hastily.

As the performance went on, it became clear that Baczynski-Jenkins intended for Saad and Sladko’s hands to be the center of attention. They were completely bare, exposed, and in constant motion, as opposed to the rest of their bodies, which remained static and still. Saad and Sladko’s hands never separated throughout the performance, and their gazes followed their hands as they moved.

Hand gestures were also used by the dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, a seminal art-historical reference for Baczynski-Jenkins’ practice. In her short film Hand Movie (1966), Rainer focuses on delicate hand moves that blur the line between the intimate and political, the public and private. Baczynski-Jenkins also finds inspiration in the political power of vernacular choreographies by the seminal Academy of Movement (Akademia Ruchu), a Polish experimental theater group founded in 1973, Warsaw, that used performance, often in public spaces, to touch upon the violence and absurdities of totalitarian reality in the USSR.

The political potential of everyday and ephemeral performances was evident in Federico, which was based on affect rather than cognition. Although Saad and Sladko formed shapes and patterns with their conjoined hands, they did not hold them long enough for capture or recognition. Their hands stayed on an image for less than a moment, and their hand formations were intricate and evanescent. They abandoned figures and created new ones with fluid and ever-changing choreography. Did they mean to depict a flying bird, scarred by the curious eyes of the audience? A shattering pyramid, an hourglass, a ship, or a kiss?

Like a fragment of an illusory whole, each performance ended before the movements and meanings that it engendered had time to be exhausted. One had to wait an hour for the next performance to begin. During those eight minutes, I felt a sense of voyeuristic curiosity, as if I had intruded upon a moment of vulnerability, one that I could not, and perhaps did not need to, fully comprehend.

It is easy to think of Baczynski-Jenkins’ work only as an intimate confession, but I see it also as a testament to the importance of closeness and collective hope, considering the ongoing military conflicts and genocides happening around the world. Simple and everyday gestures, unlike the pomp of regime spectacles, can become tools and visual codes of resistance and dissent.

In the face of wars and socio-political crises, one may ask how these minute, intimate gestures can save or help us. Perhaps they are the very thing that offers an alternative to grand promises without substance, disappointing visions, and empty political shows. Gestures of tenderness, solidarity, and courage can be created with just our fingertips.