I AM STUCK, VERY MUCH, BECAUSE OF A MISSING PAGE

My conscience bites my
tongue [langue] with your
teeth (…)
As soon as we kiss, we
salivate (…)
Between the two lips runs the language [langue].

– Hélène Cixous, L’Amour du loup et autres remords (2003)

The poet Clayton Eshleman has the theory that the moment we started to paint animals is the moment we understood ourselves to be human. It is the same era when humans first started making tools from stone, a period that encompasses roughly 99% of human technological prehistory, or the time before history was formally recorded through writing. The lack of letters did not stop information roaming, it travelled through sound, as softly hummed hunting songs or told stories, as images of large creatures and abstract signs painted onto stone walls, or exchanged through mimetics from human to human and between species. The proto language of cave painting shares some qualities with that of the doodle, except on a much less mindless and carefree quest. In search of survival, the Paleolithic imagination seemed to have one primary preoccupation; what is happening with the food situation?

Nutrition plays a key part in the stone and marble landscapes of Ceel Mogami de Haas. Little snacks prop up the works, with a cheesy pizza slice, fried egg or sausage grasping onto the corners of the cold surface. But food is also present in more abstracted form, encapsulated in depictions of different body parts that relate to language or digestion. The stone inlay technique is hand-work that has remained the same since it was first used in lavishly decorated Baroque churches. What has changed is that these pieces are calculated by computers and precision cut by lasers. It is an updated form of world building and storytelling through layered image-making, as floating ensembles of hieroglyphic narratives.

Whilst de Haas’ works explore the relations between writing and animals, there is an obvious preeminent focus towards wolves. They feature as a trope in and on literary surfaces, as seductively smoking CGI she-wolf and as werewolves. The series of colourful two-faced busts hint at this type of imaginary wolf, carrying a curious prejudice from the Early Modern period ‘Never trust a man whose eyebrows meet’ (2018) as their title. Perhaps it is those inquisitive eyes or how they switch from fiercely loyal to all alone. Whatever the reasons, it is clear the wolf has captured human imagination, with them appearing in myths and folklore across history and continents. What all these stories show is how interhuman and interspecies communication is ever on the move, changing, transforming — there is always an appetite for more.