‘WELCOME’

This installation uses cast plaster hands forming the BSL sign for “welcome”, positioned as functional door handles. The work requires viewers to physically engage with the sign in order to enter the space, transforming an everyday act of access into a moment of linguistic encounter.
By translating a gesture of welcome into both sculptural form and practical function, the piece foregrounds British Sign Language as a living, embodied language rather than a symbolic reference. The hands operate simultaneously as invitation and instruction, asking the viewer to consider who is typically welcomed into cultural spaces, and through which languages that welcome is extended.
Plaster, a material associated with casting, absence, and preservation, fixes a fleeting sign into a permanent object. This tension between movement and stillness reflects broader questions within the artist’s practice around translation between BSL and spoken English, and how meaning shifts when language moves across bodies, materials, and environments.
The work positions access not as an afterthought, but as an integral, tactile experience—one that quite literally opens the door.