Dubbele Tong
2019
ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Dubbele Tong is a soundless video piece which is in direct conversation with a text-based work titled Moeder Tong / Mother Tongue. These symbiotic works both employ the Afrikaans idiom, “Ek het my tong ingesluk” which is directly translated to the English: “I swallowed my tongue”. The meaning of the idiom and the meaning that the artist superimposed onto the original idiom are slightly different, contrasting one another whilst it “speaks” about the inability to speak. In Afrikaans, the phrase means that one has said something that should not have been said; a Freudian slip or speaking out at the wrong moment. The artist, however, wanted to build onto the idiom’s meaning; reflecting on the impossibility of swallowing one’s own tongue as well as the
feeling when words get stuck in one’s throat and one is unable to make any audible sound. In the video, a blurred mouth is seen speaking word for word in both languages simultaneously.
Alternating languages one word at a time makes it nearly impossible to decipher what is being said. This tongue-in-cheek video plays with the inability to speak, listen or fully understand one another within various conversations, meaningful or frivolous, not only in our ‘mother tongues’ but even more so when our words get lost in the translation of comprehension or reply.