La Povo de Lingvo, 1991, vinyl lettering, size variable

Translated from the Utopian universal language Esperanto, these two lines are:

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE
THE INADEQUACY OF WORDS

“ (Adam) Brooks titled one of his exhibitions "La Pova de Lingvo, La Nesufico de Vortoj," an Esperanto phrase meaning, "The power of language, the inadequacy of words." His work to date has been an effort to reveal the degree to which we still are residents in a global — and local! - Tower of Babel, forever separated from each other by the very communicative system we had believed united us. The poignancy of Esperanto, its doomed effort at collapsing the linguistic walls that divide humankind, continues to make it of special interest to Brooks.”

Excerpt fromAdam Brooks: Only Wordsby James Yood, 'Glass' magazine, Spring 1995.