The Democratic Cross

Four hands, countless combinations. Sometimes their movements seem random, sometimes meaningful. The form — a plain cross. At each end, thumbs turn on their own axis and become signs — some from long-vanished times, others forming only in this moment.

Pollice verso — the turned thumbs of the Roman gladiator arena. The crowd decides over life and death. Golgotha — a similar scene. Again the crowd passes judgment, this time it ends on a cross. Today the vote is flattened into an emoji, the reflexive sign of approval or rejection: against 👎 or for 👍.

"The Democratic Cross" pulls the symbol back out of the screen — real, three-dimensional, in motion. But do these hands conceal something? Is it like a magic trick — a diversion, meant to lose the trace? A sleight of hand, meant to confuse? Where is up, where is down? What is left, what is right?