De muren hebben oren
De muren hebben oren
'Taking one's legs'—why do we say it like that, instead of 'I'm leaving'? At the same time, people are judged when they don't speak 'correct' Dutch. We accept all kinds of peculiar idioms, yet a minor linguistic slip can sometimes be enough to cast someone aside.
The way we communicate with each other fascinates me deeply. How self-evident we consider it to be. How words follow rules, how objects communicate with us, and how we, in turn, read them. And then there are those idioms, which often express something whose meaning has long ceased to be literal. Yet we understand each other—or don't we, and are we merely pretending? In my work, I seek out the confusion within idioms, sometimes by depicting them literally, sometimes by altering them ever so slightly.
'Taking one's legs'—why do we say it like that, instead of 'I'm leaving'? At the same time, people are judged when they don't speak 'correct' Dutch. We accept all kinds of peculiar idioms, yet a minor linguistic slip can sometimes be enough to cast someone aside.
The way we communicate with each other fascinates me deeply. How self-evident we consider it to be. How words follow rules, how objects communicate with us, and how we, in turn, read them. And then there are those idioms, which often express something whose meaning has long ceased to be literal. Yet we understand each other—or don't we, and are we merely pretending? In my work, I seek out the confusion within idioms, sometimes by depicting them literally, sometimes by altering them ever so slightly.
Translated automatically ·
