To Mend My language

2020

18th-century beam scale, Buccinum Humphreysianum shell (Mediterranean Sea), thread.

32 x 25.5 cm / 12.5 x 10 inches.

*skel- : Proto Indo-European root meaning “to cut.” Believed to be the origin of the Latin culter “knife,” scalpere “to cut, scrape;” Old Church Slavonic skolika “mussel, shell,” Russian skala “rind, bark;” Lithuanian skelti “split;” Old English scell, “shell,” scalu “drinking cup, bowl, scale of a balance.” 

How do the words we utter speak to our connections with and divisions from the natural world? To Mend My Language was born out of my shock in learning that the root of the words “scale” and “shell,” *skel, means “to cut.” The fact that the enveloping part of a creature—its home and protection—was named after a splitting led me to consider the relationship between language and violence. In the very act of speaking words, we may sever ourselves from the natural world. Here, the thread reconnecting the parts of a broken shell stands in for my desire to mend the violence caused by the force of words, as well as the supposed severance of what we call “culture” from what we call “nature.”