In words by curator Mia Lopez, “For more than 40 years, Mel Casas created work that challenged and confronted existing notions of cultural identity. He carefully transgressed the margins of both the Chicano and Pop art movements, writing and theorizing on his position as an artist and “cultural adjuster.” Though he was loath to adhere to any single artistic perspective, he is credited with infusing the Chicano art movement with sharp wit and intellectualism, invigorating (and inciting) his peers and empowering his successors to do the same.”

“The hands spell out love. But the individual gestures are obscene in particular places. Love and obscenity- it’s a series of contradictions.”- Mel Casas, Born of Resistance: Cara a Cara Encounters with Chicana/o Visual Culture
“Humanscape 63 features an indigenous presence in the right foreground: an Indian hand ‘rattling out a protest.’ It’s followed by the clenched ‘fist of a white conservative…. The word love is spelled out’ one letter at a time on a black, yellow, brown, and white hand. The brown hand is siumltaneously a V and a peace sign. The next hand holds a marijuana cigarette. The last hand holds a birth control pill while it forms the OK sign… The artist is contending that however widespread or seemingly universal a hand gesture might appear to be, such gestures have divergent– even possibly contradictory– significations in different locales and for different audiences… Unfurled behind the row of hands are two flags: a black anarchist flag and a United Farm Worker’s banner. The former represents the ‘nihlism’ of anarchy… the UFW banner, by contrast, is that of a ‘new organization’ that ‘represents hope or aspiration.’... The screen image modifies a detail of Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam… God’s hand is poised to impart the spark of life to Adam’s hand. Casas describes his version of the hands as ‘frigidly depicted in the art of frozen touching.’ These stiff hands have the blue cast of corpses in rigor mortis or of marble hands that reflect the cold blue light of an electronic screen… Though the title Show of Hands implies an unambiguous vote or gesture, the painting instead calls for recognition of the complexity and specificity of culture and meaning.’” - Ruben C. Cordova, Born of Resistance: Cara a Cara Encounters with Chicana/o Visual Culture

“In Humanscape 63: Show of Hands (1970) , Casas focuses in on the symbolic language of hand gestures. Depicted in extreme close-up on the theater screen are two marmoreal hands that
pantomime the spark- of- life gesture in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The cast shadow of a third hands, with a single finger raised in an obscene salute, rises in the center of the screen to almost touch the hand of Adam. Considered in light of Casas's contemporaneous organization of Con Safo, the reference takes on an antiestablishment context. While is- sues of race were not an insignificant factor in the exclusion of Con Safo artists from museums and galleries, Casas avoids a frontal assault on solely ethnic grounds and instead attacks what is for Casas the core issue: institutional justification of denial of exhibition access on aesthetic grounds. In the Western tradition, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam panel from the Sistine Chapel is one of those rare apogeal works that has come to define, in the common understanding, true art. The powerful focal point of the Creation panel is the space between the two reaching hands, through which God sparks life and humanity in the mud. formed Adam. In choosing this particular work as a basis for his statement, Casas not only addresses antiquated aesthetic criteria but also the ethnocentric yardstick by which humanity has traditionally been measured. In the audience space across the bottom of the canvas, Casas presents a primer of additional signs that suggest additional meanings. He begins at the lower left with the brown hand of an Indian shaking a rattle in protest at the clenched fist of a white supremacist; behind them is the anarchist's black flag. In the center, four hands-black, yellow, brown, and white—spell the word "love" in American Sign Language. The brown hand raises two fingers to depict not only the letter "V" in "love" but also the V-gesture peace sign of the hippie generation. Building on the cultural associations of the peace symbol, Casas places two hands- one male. the other female -at the far right. Each holds an item significant to the "Make Love Not War" movement, specifically, a marijuana joint and a contraceptive pill. A second reference here is to the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, which had culminated with a march in Los Angeles in August of that year. The Brown Berets organized the moratorium to protest the high casualty rate of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam and a military draft that seemed to draw more heavily from the Mexican American than from the Anglo community. Casas, a wounded veteran of Korea, and against war on principle, expressed his solidarity with the antiwar movement in this painting. In the background waves the Chicano Farm Workers Union flag as an emblem of the larger social movement of which the Brown Berets were an important part. Casas adds a pop culture subtext to the painting by allowing the third hand, rising from the audience, to cast a pall over the hands signing out "love." 21 This "bird" finger gesture, like George Carlin's contemporaneous monologue on the expletive "F—— You," is emblematic of the political and sexual turmoil that plagued the "Free Love Generation."- Nancy Kelker, “Mel Casas: Redefining America,” Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology

“Humanscape 63 and Humanscape 62 are clear examples of the insider/outsider structure of the Humanscape series. The central cinematic rectangular space in Humanscape 63 provides a dual chromatic and graphic representation of Michelangelo's ‘The Creation of Adam,’ a fresco within the Sistine Chapel where God's outstretched hand is almost touching that of Adam's. The ‘Creation of Adam’ is an iconic painting that signifies Western culture. Within the outer frame in Humanscape 63, Casas provides a context for addressing Western culture with an oppositional and contrarian ‘showing of hands.’ Along the bottom of the outer frame Casas paints a series of hands that signal peace, civil rights political power, dancing, music, and smoking cigarettes or marijuana. A blank green flag emerges from the lower left corner of the painting and the United Farm Worker's flag emerges from the lower right. Emerging from the bottom, reaching all the way to the middle of the painting is a shadow of a hand giving the middle finger. This middle finger can be viewed as challenging the Western canon, both of modernity and of aesthetic American culture.Within Humanscape 63, Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" is in the center and the UFW, diverse hand signals, and middle finger are outside in the periphery. As Casas stated to Jacinto Quirarte in 1969, Chicano artists straddle two culture and like artists, are outsiders.”- Carlos Francisco Jackson, Mel Casas: The Permeable and Porous Borderlands, Iconic Reality

“Perhaps Casas's Humanscape series is best encapsulated by ‘Humanscape 63 (Show of Hands),’ which depicts an abstracted film screen showing a grayscale variation of Michelangelo's ‘Creation of Adam.’ In the middle-ground, a black anarchist flag opposes a United Farm Workers Flag, an important icon during the Chicano labor movement. The foreground features, from left to right: an arm holding a maraca, a Black Power fist, hands spelling out ‘love’ in sign language, a hand holding a joint, and a hand making the ‘OK’ signal, all varying in skin tones. The entire piece is shadowed by the silhouette of a hand giving the middle finger, with the label ‘Show of Hands’ stenciled in at the bottom. ‘Humanscape 63’ represents Casas's fragmentation of identity. The forceful hand gestures are undermined by their disembodiment; there exists a violent detachment that denies the artist bodily unity, hence an incomplete self. Still, the many fragments of the work inevitably come together to compile a Lacanian illusory self, punctuated by the central defiant gesture of the middle finger. While Casas's power symbols are impotent due to corporeal loss, the middle finger makes a vigorous phallic assertion and successfully reclaims the misappropriated agency. The play on words and satirical elements in this piece are characteristic of Casas's tongue-in-cheek approach to identity politics. Yet the message is mixed.
While Chicano elements are clear, they are not predominant; rather, the inclusion of so many other ethnic and racial allusions somewhat dilutes the potency of the Chicano symbols. This is indicative both of Casas's ambiguity toward the homogeny of one label, as well as the influence of the broader political climate at the time. Where other Chicano artists tended to restrict their vision to their sole heritage, Casas contextualized the movement, and by exhibiting its parallels to other political developments, he established a sense of inclusion.”
- Mia Lopez, Hyperallergic

“In ‘Humanscape 63,’ the near-touching hands of God and Adam from Michelango's Sistene Chapel fresco ‘The Creation of Adam’ float against the black background of a movie screen. The shadow of a third hand with a raised middle finger reaches up to meet them. ‘I think what this was for him was the interplay of the sacred and profane,’ Cordova said. In the foreground, hands in a range of skin colors signal various ideologies and beliefs, including a multicultural quartet spelling out ‘love’ in American Sign Language. ‘I think what he especially savored about this is that every one of these gestures is obscene somewhere else,’ Cordova said.” - Elda Silva, San Antonio Express News, My SA Sunday

“In Humanscape 63 (1970), subtitled ‘Show of Hands,’ Casas focuses in on the symbolic language of hand gestures. Depicted in extreme close-up on the theater screen are two marmoreal hands which pantomime the spark-of-life gesture in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The cast shadow of a third hand, with a single finger raised in an obscene salute, rises in the center of the screen to almost touch the hand of Adam. Considered in light of Casas' contemporaneous organization of Con Safo, the reference takes on an anti-establishment context. While issues of race were not an insignificant factor in the exclusion of Con Safo artists from museums and galleries, Casas avoids a frontal assault on solely ethnic grounds and instead attacks what is for Casas the core issue: institutional justification of denial of exhibition access on aesthetic grounds. In the Western tradition, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam panel from the Sistine Chapel is one of those rare apogeal works that has come to define, in the common understanding, true art. The powerful focal point of the Creation panel is the space between the two reaching hands, through which God sparks life and humanity in the mud-formed Adam. In choosing this particular work as a basis for his statement, Casas not only addresses antiquated aesthetic criteria but also the ethnocentric yardstick by which humanity has traditionally been measured. In the audience space across the bottom of the canvas, Casas presents a primer of additional signs which suggest additional meanings. He begins at the lower left with the brown hand of an Indian shaking a rattle in protest at the clenched fist of a white supremacist; behind them is the anarchist's black flag. In the center, four hands - black, yellow, brown, and white - spell the word, ‘love’ in American Sign Language. The brown hand raises two fingers to depict not only the letter ‘v’ in ‘love’ but also the v-gesture peace sign of the hippie generation. Building on the cultural associations of the peace symbol, Casas places two hands: one male, the other female, at the far right. Each holds an item significant to the ‘Make Love Not War’ movement, specifically, a marijuana joint and a contraceptive pill. A second reference here is to the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, which had culminated with a march in Los Angeles in August of that year. The Brown Berets organized the moratorium to protest the high casualty rate of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam and a military draft that seemed to draw more heavily from the Mexican American than from the Anglo community. Casas, a wounded veteran of Korea, and against war on principle, expressed his solidarity with the anti-war movement in this painting. In the background waves the Chicano Farm Workers Union Flag as an emblem of the larger social movement of which the Brown Berets were an important part. Casas adds a pop culture subtext to the painting by allowing the third hand, rising from the audience, to cast a pall over the hands signing out ‘love’ (Casas personal communication 2003). This ‘bird’ finger gesture, like George Carlin's contemporaneous monologue on the expletive ‘F-- You,’ is emblematic of the political and sexual turmoil that plagued the ‘Free Love Generation.’"- Nancy Kelker, Mel Casas: Artist as Cultural Adjuster