Alms

A palm may offer, beg, bless, conceal, count, or receive. Here, it performs all of these functions.

The viewer is made to supply the motive.

The small collection of coins appear to be the work’s most legible objects and are its least trustworthy. They suggest payment, alms, winnings, tribute, or bribe.

They are small bureaucratic seals pressed into the palm: proof that value has passed through, though not proof of where it came from or where it is going.

One could classify the image as devotional, occult, or transactional. The upper hands imply supplication; the lower hand stages a demonstration; the coins complicate the reading.

Its achievement is to show how quickly we convert ambiguity into belief. We see hands, coins, and shadow, then construct intention.