DoveHand: Two Symbols of Peace in One Sculpture

This is Ave quiromántica (Palmist Bird) by José Seguiri. The sculpture is a homage to Rafael Pérez Estrada, a poet, writer and graphic artist. It is based on one of his paintings Paloma Quiromántica (Palmist Dove). But what’s the message?

by FERENC IVANICS
We were just walking in the center of Málaga and stumbled upon this sculpture. We were amazed by it, we thought it was an omen. We’d been feeling quite hopeless and frustrated for a couple of days: no job, no money, dirty, smelly clothes. The flyers we had distributed didn’t give the expected results, some people found us and the WorldWalk-Peacetour interesting, but many of them were insensitive or dismissive. What’s more, the local police warned us that the distribution of the flyers can be illegal. So we were in trouble, in a very bad mood, and then came the dove...


Finding it in our worrying conditions was a like a wink of hope. We were just standing there with our eyes wide open, enchanted for a couple of seconds or for a minute, we lost our sense of time. This sculpture features a dove and a hand. Both are very strong symbols of peace. In the holy books of Christianity, Islam and Judaism there’s a story about Noah and his ark. After the Great Flood Noah sent out a white dove, and it returned with an olive branch in its beak. This meant that the flood was over, there was peace between God and his creations. That’s why the dove—with or without an olive branch—is a symbol of peace.

And the hands. We were thinking about handshake and giving a hand. Handshake is a peaceful gesture that says: I don’t have any weapons. Nowadays we shake hands to welcome each other, to confirm our arrangements and to express our respect. Respect, compromises and open-heart, these are essential ingredients of peace. Giving a hand means helping someone. If you help someone, you feel her or his problems, you are together with her or him in her or his trouble, you are fully empathic. Empathy, co-working and helping each other, this is the way we could bring peace and harmony.

But a hand as a symbol has a more archaic meaning: act. So you can interpret the message of the sculpture the following way: acts are necessary to bring and keep peace. Many philosophers and psychologists think that in our material world acts are more effective, more fruitful than thoughts and ideas. Peace doesn’t need complex thoughts, but simple, clean and nice acts. But I think the message of this sculpture is deeper. A hand, particularly a clean hand, symbolizes the clean and rightful, truthful acts. That’s why peace and truth cannot be separated. Tha fact, that there is no peace now is caused by lies. Lies rule our world, we are permanently lying, not only to each other, but to ourselves, too. We can call this phenomenon existential-lying and until we can’t overcome this existential-lying in ourselves, we can’t bring peace. That was the message of the scuplture for me and my brother. And that’s why we won’t give up, we’ll keep on walking to share that message.