Program > By author > Bansal Suramya

The act of imprinting hands cuts across spatial and temporal boundaries and shows ubiquitous behavioural practice and reflects cognitive fluidity. The exercise of replicating ways of making hand imprints is helpful in digging out underlying anatomical mechanics and adaptability of hands. These imprints apart from expressing left or right orientation, incorporate hand ability, skill and preference linked to the broader concept of handedness. This opens interpretive challenges due to undercurrents of mixed-handedness and ambidexterity, along with contributing factors from an embedded socio-cultural matrix, if any. The intersecting web of haptics, embodiment and laterality integrates a theoretical and interpretive framework for this qualitative and quantitative trait. Hand motifs can have multiple symbolic and non-symbolic meanings, varying from one society and culture to another in deep, historical and contemporary times. As a result of its diverse contextual and detailed dynamic manipulation, hand imprints hold much more than meets the eye.