Slavs and Tartars, a unique collective of artists founded in 2006, define their practice 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, disciplines, and a broad spectrum of cultural registers (high and low) focusing on an oft-forgotten sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians.
Research and an interest in language are two important facets of the group’s activities, evidenced in Kitab Kebab. “Kitab” is Arabic for “book,” and merging a selection of the collective’s books into a kebab is an apt metaphor for how we absorb knowledge and culture from around the globe, and how they come together to form our understanding of the world. Slavs and Tartars have had solo shows at MoMA, New York; Kunsthalle Zurich; Art Space Pythagorion, Samos; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; and Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art, Aalst, among others. Concentrations 57: Slavs and Tartars is on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through December 14, 2014.