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SLAVS AND TATARS at Secession in Vienna
May 3 – Jun 17, 2012
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The collective Slavs and Tatars defines itself as “a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia.” The collective’s work spans several media and disciplines and a broad spectrum of cultural registers both high and low while focusing on an area in which Slav, Caucasian, and Central Asian influences overlap. In their mainly research-based work, Slavs and Tatars address the ancient and the past, the marginal and the oft-forgotten. Always on the lookout for points of comparison, they find the similarities between things that appear to be incommensurable. This process of equation leads to appropriations and reinterpretations of history that contradict the well-known narratives of the mighty and victorious. During the past four years the group produced two cycles of work, with projects such as Kidnapping Mountains (2009), Hymns of No Resistance (2009), and Molla Nasreddin (2011) addressing the Caucasus, while the unlikely shared heritage of Iran and Poland is the subject of Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi’ite Showbiz (2010), 79.89.09 (2010), and A Monobrow Manifesto (2010). The exhibition at the Vienna Secession inaugurates the third cycle of works by Slavs and Tatars, which will be an attempt to paint the portrait of the contemporary anti-modern.
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