One day, I had to go to the dentist to get my teeth checked. Anyway, while I was there, the dentist told me that you can feel a hundred times more detail with your mouth than with your hands.

While I went back to my studio, I kept thinking about it. OK: the last thing you want to do is put a piece of clay in your mouth when you decide to make some art. I did though, because nobody was watching, and it was gross and the only thing I got was ugly, wet, abstract art.

No, what I needed to do was get back to the stuff that’s really meant for putting in your mouth, which is GUM. Because your mouth knows exactly what to do with gum, and so do you.

So I put a piece of gum in my mouth and started chewing it really consciously. In my mind, I tried to picture the inside of my mouth. And each time round, really fresh abstract art popped out of my mouth. All of a sudden, I knew what I had to do next. I needed to learn how to chew the alphabet. Because when you talk, words leave your mouth – so it made sense to make them entirely in your mouth with gum. Because then, you’re not only thinking about what you want to say, but also what you want to say will look like.

NN

concept by Navid Nuur

photography by Jhoeko

website by Perceptor

