Under-window Tapestry With Monkeys

With three dogs in my family home, not once did I say: “My dog is disgusted with something”. Any expression of disgust was absent from the muzzle of either Sara, Ansu, or Agata. Yet I often saw our pooches walk away from a bowlful of food they found detestable. I saw, but what did I really see? I can’t recall.

I admit: the artwork you’re looking at right now is an uncanny exhibit of abomination. There’s no expression of disgust in sight. Instead, on the left, the artist positioned two monkeys re-enacting a scene from the Book of Genesis. Monkey Eve tempts monkey Adam with an apple. Adam bares his teeth – out of glee, out of fear, out of anger, we aren’t privy to that. However, undeniably, there’s no grimace of disgust. There is a fruit. There is reluctance. Literalism is missing. It’s thus because disgust encompasses a range of situations when – not just literally, but also metaphorically – we refuse to eat something, to munch, to lick, to savour it. The still-untouched forbidden fruit may trigger such emotions. But there’s no obligation. Just as it’s not obligatory to decode the tapestry as a blatant allusion to the biblical motif of original sin. But such an option remains. And, well, though it’s no news to us, let’s repeat over and over again: Disgust is no sin!