Slavs and Tatars

Founded in 2006, the art collective Slavs and Tatars is devoted to cultural intersection in the area known as Eurasia--everywhere east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China. The group's multimedia works focus on the often-ignored influences between Slavic, Caucasian and Central Asian identities and societies.
Debuting at Kunsthalle Zurich, and traveling to NYU's new campus in Abu Dhabi, Institute of Modern Art Brisbane and the Blaffer Art Museum, Slavs and Tatars' exhibition Mirrors for Princes comments on the culture of "advice literature." The show consists of sound installations, steel sculptures and mixed-media fixtures that highlight contemporary society's obsession with self-help books and self-preservation. Using the 11th-century Kutadgu Bilig as a starting point, this publication brings together the writings of preeminent scholars and commentators to discuss such diverse topics as the role of fate in governance, advice for female nobility and an Indian television drama.

The latest publication from the Slavs and Tatars artist collective is a fascinating, humorous consideration of pedagogy, language mysticism and the written word, all pivoting on a single phoneme: "kh." Part of Slavs and Tatars' Faculty of Substitution cycle, Khhhhhhh looks at the phoneme's recurrence across Semitic, Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets, and its mystical, literary and political applications: Kabalah, gematria and Russian Futurist Velemir Khlebnikov's exploration of phonemes and his Futurist "zaum" language. Parts of this project were exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012, in the Museum's Projects series.