Thinking Hands

Thinking Hands is about the knowledge that lives in our body. In making, in touching and in feeling. Knowledge that you cannot simply put into data or into a computer. What does the body know that the mind does not?

Often your body knows something before your mind does. Think of the seamstress who recognises fabric by its pressure and resistance. Or the dancer who feels the floor through the foot. Or the surgeon who feels with her hands what her eyes cannot see. The Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa calls this ‘the thinking hand.’ Because this knowledge is not in your head: it lives in your fingers, your gut and your feelings.

The writer and activist Audre Lorde wrote about a similar kind of knowledge in 1978. According to her, the body really does know things, but that knowledge is often not taken seriously. This is especially true for women and for groups who are heard less in society. Their knowledge is often called dangerous or illogical, while it can be exactly a source of strength. The knowledge of our ancestors works the same way. People passed it on through gestures and rituals, long before there were words for it. And these are technologies too. They just do not count in a world that measures knowledge in data, speed and growth.

Large tech companies build systems that think and choose for us. They call this the future of intelligence. But they may be leaving out the most important thing: everything the body already knows. That knowledge lives in people and is passed on through hands and touch. And it disappears when the body that carries it is gone. That is why Thinking Hands asks what we lose when we do not take this knowledge seriously.

The exhibition brings together photography, video and installations. Some works show how you make photography with your hands: with fabric, paper, or clay. Other works are about what else the body knows: about play, about care and violence. From a photo studio to motherhood to a kitchen where the gestures grow angrier and angrier. In Thinking Hands, care and love take on a political meaning too. They are a form of resistance against a world that mostly looks at what you make and achieve. And then there is the digital side, where the hand hands its work over to systems that carry on without its body: work on screens, and a large robot that has no hands and can only speak.

Right there, where the work of the body passes to the machine, Thinking Hands asks its question: what are we putting at stake? Each work gives its own answer. Through photography, through robotics, through clay, through movement, through love and through care. Sometimes you see the hands in the image. Sometimes they have long since gone, but you can still read their traces.

12 September to 1 November 2026
THEA, Niemeyer, Paterswoldseweg 43, Groningen

Opening Programme Sunday 13 September 2026
14:00 Doors open
14:00-17:00 Ongoing performance by Petja Ivanova
15:00 Opening talk with Roosje Klap (Director of Noorderlicht), Rosa Wevers (THEA Programme Curator) and Hannah, Noorderlicht’s new Children’s Director
15:30 Performance by art collective WERC with dancer Olympia Kotopoulos
16:00 Festive opening of the exhibition, with many of the participating artists in attendance

With and by Martina Bacigalupo, Blommers & Schumm, Kévin Bray, Koos Breukel, Vera van de Burg, Devlin Claro, Chelsi Alise Cocking, Rebekka Deubner, Mandy Franca, Loïe Fuller, Andi Galdi Vinko, Jane Jin Kaisen, Paul Kooiker, Oldereid / Kvam, Jan Robert Leegte, Kiki Mager, Lisa Oppenheim, Frida Orupabo, Laure Prouvost, Robin de Puy / Strijbos & van Rijswijk, Martha Rosler, Works Progress Administration, Xhanti Zwelendaba & Ben Stanwix

Curated by Musoke Nalwoga and Roosje Klap.

Made possible by Stimuleringsfonds, Mondriaan Fonds and Beringer Hazewinkel.

Image: Paul Kooiker / Design: Loes Claessens