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Slavs and Tatars

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Slavs and Tatars is an arts collective focused on Eurasia and a shared sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians. The collective is made of four members who are based in Brussels, Belgium, Cambridge, UK and Moscow, Russia.


History and Work

Slavs and Tatars was founded in 2005. Print media has played a significant role in their work from the start: namely, the Slavs Poster (2005) and the Nations (2007) series, with such quirky aphorisms as 'Men are from Murmansk, Women are from Vilnius' and 'Nice Tan, Turkmenistan!' exhibited at the 2nd Moscow Biennale and 10th anniversary of legendary Parisian Colette_(boutique)[1]. The medium of print offered the group the opportunity to distribute delicately produced polemics and ephemera to a relatively wide audience, such as the Drafting Defeat:10th Century Roadmaps, 21st century Disasters, a series of 10th century maps of the Middle East by Al-Istakhri[2]. "Language is at the heart of [their] practice"[3] as is a brutal sense of humour and a suspicion of positivist thought and of modernization as a guise for westernization. Their work "attempts to reclaim history by retelling it, and primarily through the perspective of the defeated, as opposed to the victors."[4]

In 2009, Slavs and Tatars published Kidnapping Mountains with London-based Book Works: "a playful and informative exploration of the muscular stories, wills, and defeat inhabiting the Caucasus region"[5]. The book coincided with the exhibit of the same name at the Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art in Aalst, Belgium.

Slavs and Tatars' work often takes place in the public sphere: via public space, institutions or media. They have repeatedly collaborated with and been featured in 032c, the bi-annual culture publication from Berlin. Their year long project 79/89/09 looked at two key dates–the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the fall of Communism in 1989–to better understand the historic year of 2009. 79/89/09 was exemplary of the multidisciplinary work of the group: consisting of a lecture series which travelled to the Rietveld Academy, Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Dutch Art Institute, and the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, a print edition, a mirror mosaic Resist Resisting God as well as a feature in two consecutive issues (17 and 18 respectively) of 032c.

For the Wola Art Festival, in the historical Wola District in Warsaw, S&T created Idz na Wschod! (or Go East!): a billboard featuring Charles Bronson (in fact from Lipka Tatar not Mexican or Native American heritage) invites Warsaw's residents to defy their parents and their government and head not west but rather east. A full-day trip for 50+ people was organized to the Polish Tatar villages of Bohoniki and Kruszyniany near the Bieolrussian border to visit the Polish Tatar mosques, cemetaries and a Tatar meal.[6] Idz na Wschod! offered an alternative, more cosmopolitan reading of Polish national identity, one unfortunately often considered homogeneous; as well as a unique, progressive view of Islam, via the vernacular architecture and customs of the Polish Tatars.


Reception

Slavs and Tatars has been described by Holland Cotter of the New York Times as "a publishing concern...with a worthy mission (to focus on multicultural Eurasia)"[7] and Shaun Walker in Fantastic Man calls it "an ambitious project that aims to look at the Eurasian region as a whole."[8] Bidoun Magazine says that for Slavs and Tatars "geography becomes a metaphor for something bigger, something unwieldy—lost histories, accidents, oversights, mistakes. Geography can also be a provocation, an occasion to think again."

Their work (Slavs, the Nations series and the artist-book A Thirteenth Month Against Time) is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.


References

  1. ^ Menkes, Suzy. "Paris’ Colette," International Herald Tribune, March 26, 2007
  2. ^ Basar, Shumon ed. Cities from Zero (London: AA Publications, 2007).
  3. ^ Azimi, Negar. "I Often Dream of Slavs," Bidoun (2009: 16).
  4. ^ Chu, Ingrid. "Rebuilding the Pantheon: an interview with Slavs and Tatars," Fillip (2008: 8).
  5. ^ Slavs and Tatars, Kidnapping Mountains (London: Book Works, 2009)
  6. ^ Rejnson, Andrzej. "Wolska architektura w rekach artystow," Polska, November 18, 2009.
  7. ^ Cotter, Holland. "Art between Covers," New York Times, September 29, 2006.
  8. ^ Walker, Shaun. "The Expatriate," Fantastic Man (2009: 9).




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