Sign Language

an essay about my recent work "We Were Mechanosensory" and being misunderstood as a person and an artist

My grandmother has 8 children, 3 of them are deaf-mute,
one of them visits her every year for christmas.
This christmas he brought my grandma some persimmons,

We sat on the table and he signed to me:
"I brought something round and orange for your grandma,
I don't know what they're called, they're really sweet,
maybe you'd like them, no seeds in the middle and they're orange."

Nobody understood what he really meant and even though
I understood the signs, I still thought he was saying that he had brought some
oranges and that they were really sweet and had no seeds.
I was pleasantly surprised when he gave me the persimmon,
and at the same time I was sad and a little angry with myself.

How could I not immediately understand what he was trying
to say with all the signs he was giving me to understand?

I have thought about this ever since,
including when I was in the process of making 'We Were Mechanosensory'.

We Were Mechanosensory , 2025

I guess it’s no surprise for my uncle that he's been misunderstood,
I think he felt it his whole life and in a way we all do.
I will not call it good or bad, but
maybe this is why I got sad
or maybe seeing him not being able to connect to what people are talking about.

This also happens to people who can hear and speak. We put our interpretation
and picture of the world and how people are onto their words and signs,
projecting things all the time that aren't the truth, until we can't hear what they were
trying to express, or rather we stop to listen when we start to assume.
People are prone to misunderstand and misinterpret what was said and I found peace in
that, after all it gave me a story to get my teeth into.

I happily stopped trying to be understood, and that is what made me an artist in the first place; knowing so well that people will either choose to misunderstand or unintentionally misunderstand my work, my ways, my being and also others too.

We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
Anaïs Nin

Source: Susan Aldworth , Installation ‘Out Of Body’ (2009) parts of which inspired me in the process of ‘We Were Mechanosensory’

People have often told me that my mother twists their words & she does it with everything I say too, to the point where I start to say nothing and use a non-verbal sign language too.

I was rebelling and always in confrontation with the fact that my mom did not listen, talked over me and formed my words into something i’ve never intented to express, even though she was one of the 8 who could hear and speak.

Now I gave up relying on her or trying to get any understanding from people in general or better said I stopped the need of it. Subtle and sometimes intentionally clear signs became my way of roaring, every wall I've painted in my hometown at the time screamed at her in patterns we used to live our lives by, until everything inside me got silent finally.

Years of painting, creating and roaring later, I felt that my sign language might not be understood by others fully, but something deep inside me shifted and healed by expressing it, and I believe that parts of being misunderstood triggered that healing and cleansing.

I still I roar in each artwork,
but I see that it has become quieter and less confrontational over the years
as I felt through it all and accepted what has been given to me or put onto.
People have told me that my work changed,
and here is why: I have, and my work has followed to change with me.
It's such a basic sentence there is nothing mysterious about the change,
nothing philosophical to conclude.

Every symbol, colour and pattern is still a sign,
Some I keep close and hidden within me, and some I'd like to share.
And even after learning this lesson, there is a voice within me
that asks if anyone could ever understand?
And with this voice I have to learn the lesson again,
going round and round in circles.
To look at myself and my origin. (the egg and the eye)

I cannot “make” people understand, I don’t want to either, but I can express what I have to,
knowing that not even I can grasp all the parts within my subconscious,
but I will always listen into what comes up, flow in time and find a language to translate what
wants to be told into something others can recieve in their own ways.

Everyone can see their perception of it,
shaping our words into something that fits them,
our images, symbols and signs into something they want to see,
which is as fascinating as it is isolating depending on who we meet.

Each artwork starts in one point of view,
as soon as it's shared it forms into multiple stories
& tells everyone their own.

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if you feel connected to my work you can find more here: www.rabeapie.com

Thank you for reading.
xx Rabea Pie