The fingerprint is unique to each individual and is recognizably human independent of race, sex or creed. Therefore, it symbolizes equality of all individuals, an equality which is a prerequisite for peace. As Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin was a driving force behind the Oslo Peace Accords until he was assassinated in 1995.
- Martha Dunham, 2005
See also the Forge A Bridge For Peace project

The self is a mystery so close we can nearly touch it. Yet truly knowing who we are is so ungraspable, that over the course of our lives we can lose and find ourselves again and again. The conundrum of identity is both personal and political, biological and spiritual. It is the soft tissue at the cutting edge of technology, the human voice that cries out for justice, the individual consciousness awake in the world.
In her sculpture "Forged Identity: Yitzhak Rabin", Martha L. Dunham has given form to the enigma of identity in a strikingly physical way. Her cast bronze fingerprint honors the life of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, who was assassinated in 1995. The fingerprint, which is nearly four feet tall, extends upward from a concrete base. The bronze whorls of the fingerprint create a kind of screen, through which the viewer looks. The piece can be seen from either side, and brings the world seen past it into play.
Dunham has created a sculpture whose rich metaphoric implications begin with the fingerprint itself. A signature of the bodily self, its pattern of ridged loops, arches, and whorls are unique to each individual. The fingerprint has been used to identify a person by the individual marks they leave or to register one's identity with the authorities. As personal as the fingerprint is, it is a sign of our common humanity existing beyond all defining categories.
In the hands of Martha L. Dunham, the fingerprint takes on a poetic resonance. She began with an anonymous fingerprint, enlarged it, and saw in its complex branching curves something both specific and larger than an individual self. And she saw how this image might celebrate the work of Yitzhak Rabin, who devoted his life to peace, was martyred in his efforts, but whose spirit and vision live on.
The form of Dunham's sculpture with its maze-like lines alternating with corridors of space recalls a labyrinth, in whose endless turnings a hero risks losing his or her way. The ancient symbolism of the labyrinth intimates that at its center lies a darkness and a mortal danger, which if transcended can yield spiritual liberation. Dunham's sculpture is paradoxically a labyrinth whose openness invites both light and hope to enter. The fingerprint stands like a gate, drawn with bronze in space for our imagination to pass through, realizing as it does the tenuousness of each individual existence, and the significance of that singular identity to the whole matrix of life.
- John Mendelsohn, 2005


See also the Signs For Peace Project for more essays and art relating fingerprints to peace.