Delphine Leulier

Delphine Leulier lives and works in Marseille (FR)

So as not to turn them against myself, so as to stop extending them toward others, so as not to bear arms.
What do I know how to do with my hands?
Could I do something else to keep my hands busy?
Very simple things for which I need my hands: getting dressed in the morning, making a bed, I wash with my hands, I wash my hands, I undress with my hands, I need my hands to drink, and for many other things that don’t keep me busy for long, that don’t keep my hands busy for long.

And all these things can be done by others.
As a baby, I was dressed, I was washed, I was given something to drink and eat, my bed was made for me.
I don’t need my hands to breathe.
I don’t need my hands to live.
But to live, I need to keep my hands busy.
I need my hands to rub my eyes.

But rubbing my eyes is a bit like writing to keep my hands busy. In both cases, it’s about, for a time (different each time), removing vision, escaping certain forms of clarity in order to see differently or try to see better.
I often bring my hand to my mouth, as if to bring back, with a gesture, the words that just came out, or to go fetch them. In this way, I retrace an original path, where words, instead of traveling from the head to the hand that writes them, went directly to the mouth.

My hands are tenacious, and they extend me.
They are the relay between what is me and what I place in front of or outside of me.
They take charge of sadness – I hide my face behind my hands – or of anger – I pretend to strangle you with my hands. But also of desire – I caress you with my hands.

In the phrase “I write to keep my hands busy,” “I write” could be replaced by “I knit,” “I tinker,” “I nibble.”
Only the tightrope-walking writer works without hands. With a single outstretched foot, they are already partly in the other side of the world, which hangs by a thread.

The writer, whose primary activity is manual, is, like the seamstress, a little hand.

Excerpt from I write to keep my hands busy, Tiphaine Samoyault.

Delphine Leulier’s work is on display during the exhibition Trabendo, 2003.