Nicky Coutts

See Nature is a series of 21 pen drawings on Fabriano paper. They are based on a speech in sign language that asked human beings to ‘fix nature’ given by the gorilla Koko at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris via video link. Koko was taught to sign by American animal psychologist Francine Patterson from infancy and could ‘speak’ of her past, how she was feeling and what she most desired. Coutts learnt Koko’s signed speech in her studio and in See Nature combines her own gestures, hand and body movements needed to sign this single phrase and the gorilla’s presence and gravity as she sits to deliver the speech. The ‘sign’ evolves on paper adapting within a practice of drawing, as Koko adapted American Sign Language to suit her processes of cognition and morphology.

See Nature is part of a body of work titled ‘Man Stupid’ (another phrase from the gorilla Koko’s speech at COP21). ‘Man Stupid’ also includes Theory of Mind, Thought Sequence and the large-scale drawing series Man Stupid.

See Beast publication.