One of my friends was telling me about this from his recent hiking trip along the Pan American Highway. I decided to look it up because it sounded kinda surreal. Wow. Wanted to share this with you.
It’s one of the highlights of the Pan-American Highway, an eerie hand reaching out of the desert, fingertips pointed at the sky. Like something out of Gulliver’s Travels, La Mano del Desierto is in fact the creation of Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal, built in 1992 in the Atacama Desert.
Located in the middle of nowhere, some 75km south of the city of Antofagasta, the sculpture has nevertheless become something of a tourist destination.
The hand has a base of iron and cement, and stands 11m/36ft tall, at 3608ft above sea level. Occasionally, for some inexplicable reason, it gets vandalized. Luckily, devoted preservationists clean it up again.
It’s one of the several surreal hand sculptures created by Irarrazábal around the world – like Dedos in Madrid, and Monumento al Ahogado (Monument to the Drowned) in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
And it seems plenty of other artists have had similarly disturbing visions of disembodied hands (check out this link).
One well worth the drive. RM
