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The Unposed (EoAT) is the first monograph by Danish artist Michala Paludan, it consists of 101 photos of robot “hands”. From 2021-24 Paludan visited many different sites of robotics located in Germany, Denmark, Japan, Korea, and the United States. From digital paws to laser sensors, piano-playing electro-fingers to a not-so-dexterous clamp, this book shows the human hand versioned as high-tech utensil: holders, pinchers, grabbers, supporters, strokers and cutters whose likenesses to the real thing vary according to particularity of their functions.

In the robotics industry, the acronym EoAT refers to End of Arm Tools; that is, a tool required for performing a specific handlike task such as holding, cutting or lifting, and the hardest thing to design on a robot. As the subject of a portrait, the machine – rather than what it produces – is the focus and, in mirroring the hands of human workers, Paludan emphasizes their absence.

Michala Paludan (b. 1983) is a Danish artist currently living and working in Copenhagen. Paludan is a fellow of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2012) and received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2011). She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 2005 to 2009. During the past decade Paludan has framed how power is produced and negotiated across networks and movements, through media such as video, photography and installation. Paludan has exhibited widely in Scandinavia and abroad. Recent exhibitions include: I am Your Body: Automation at Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Open Shut Them at C.C.C. Gallery, Copenhagen and Our Work at Lunds Konsthall, Lund.