القلب على طرف اللسان
Das Herz auf der Zunge
Le cœur sur la langue
What the heart thinks the tongue speaks
a project by Katrin Ströbel

Le Cube hosts Le cœur sur la langue – القلب على طرف اللسان, a multilingual exhibition designed by artist Katrin Ströbel, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Maroc, INBA Tétouan, and ABK Stuttgart, in dialogue with artists Karima El Karmoudi, Dimitri Akim Moudar, and Fatima-Ezzahra El Khammas. Enriched by various artistic interventions, the project will also develop through the reflections and creations of students from INBA Tétouan and ABK Stuttgart.

Morocco is a multilingual country whose contemporary linguistic landscape has been shaped equally by native and colonial languages: Arabic, Darija, Amazigh languages, French, and Spanish intersect and overlap in complex ways.
Germany, by contrast, appears at first glance to be a largely monolithic linguistic space, one in which the historical violence of Germany’s past remains inscribed to this day. At the same time, around one third of the people living in Germany speak at least one additional language at home, and approximately 10% speak Arabic. While in Germany language is almost automatically equated with written language, oral and spoken language occupies a central position in Morocco. Whether written or spoken: language connects people and brings them together, yet it can also be divisive and violent. Language reflects power relations and dominant discourses, both in Morocco and in Germany.

How do our language(s) shape our thinking and our relationships with others? How can images speak when verbal language reaches its limits? Drawing and writing share a common origin in the same gesture. Sketches, doodles or descriptive drawings become means of communication between people who do not share the same language. How can written, oral, and visual languages be translated artistically into one another?

With this project, Katrin Ströbel proposes viewing the moment of translation not only as a problem, but also as a potential. What spaces open up in the stammering, stumbling, and slipping from one language to another—from image to text, from language to drawing? How can we create something new within and from these gaps?

The exhibition at Le Cube marks the beginning of a longer-term project that will continue in 2027 in Morocco and Germany. It is supported by the Goethe Institut of Morocco.