Slavs and Tatars: Mouth to Mouth

Defining an area ‘east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China’ as their remit, Slavs and Tatars repeatedly creolize, craft and collide a political and imagined geography to topple our brittle notions of identity, language, and beliefs.Throughout their 10 year practice, the artist collective has turned to Turkic language politics, medieval advice literature, the relationship between Iran and Poland, and transliteration, to name but a few of their areas of research.A region sandwiched between empires (Russian, Byzantine, Persian, to name a few), ideologies (Communism and political Islam), not to mention the Abrahamic faiths, Eurasia becomes a foil to an understanding of ourselves as multiple subjectivities.The artists’ work (from sculptures to lecture performances, installations to publications) similarly overturn the traditional hierarchies of understanding, seeing, and listening. Slavs and Tatars aim to free knowledge from the Enlightenment confines of the mind.Accompanies the mid-career touring exhibition, Slavs and Tatars: Mouth to Mouth at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (Nov 2016 – Feb 2017); Pejman Foundation, Tehran (Apr 2017); Salt Galata, Istanbul (Jun 2017); CAC Vilnius (Sep 2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (Nov 2017); and Albertinum, Dresden (Winter 2017-2018).Slavs and Tatars’ art work in museum collections includes MoMA, New York, and Tate Modern, London. Their work has been exhibited at museums such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), and has been included in art festivals such as, Manifesta, and Berlin Biennale.