It was animals that were created first, only thereafter, human beings. Seniority, the privilege of age, was compensated by the privilege of designation, the late arrival meant: “the ability to observe and appropriately designate what came before“. (Peter Sloterdijk) But human beings are the notorious late arrivers, one should not be deceived by the biblical version. Because humans only come into their own through language, the individual must always harbor the eerily daunting gap of pre-linguistic existence.

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When Deborah Sengl uses metalinguistic capability in order to create a new word, she refers to the fact that the found language masks as much as it reveals. By creating the word “ertarnen“ (“to deceive through displacement”), which is used in most of the titles of her artworks, she incapsulates the central themes of her work: humans, animals, camouflage, and breeding. more »