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Debora Coombs
Brothers & Sisters 98.4%
Artist’s Statement
“Brothers & Sisters: 98.4%”
Hand-painted fired glass, lead, oak & cast iron.
“Language is a funny thing. It permits us to think that we know things that indeed we do not know.”
“You little monkeys!” my mother would say when we misbehaved as kids. Becoming educated meant leaving the animal behind. Becoming civilized.
Some years ago, a brief foray into Sanskrit impressed upon me how simple language is: just various positions of tongue, teeth and lips. Monkeys, apes and other mammals besides humans can create vowel sounds but man alone has a vocal tract that can produce the consonants needed to ‘package’ sound into speech. A small but significant biological advantage.
Kanzi is a 16 year-old bonobo chimp who plays video games and tells jokes. He communicates by punching symbols that light up like stained glass Scrabble tiles.
“Language is a funny thing. It enables man to put himself above the “beasts’ simply by the act of saying to himself, ‘God gave man dominion over all the creatures….’
What if we never said that to ourselves?”
Quotes from: “Apes, Language, and the Human Mind” by Sue Savage Rumbaugh 1997
Debora Coombs
October 2005
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